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THE 


WCIPLES  OF  COMPARATIVE 
PHILOLOGY. 


BY 


A.    H.    SAYCE, 


FELLOW  AND  TUTOR  OF  QUEEN'S  COLLEGE,  OXFORD  ; 

MEMBER  OF  THE  ROYAL  ASIATIC  SOCIETY,  OF  THE  SOCIETY  OF  BIBLICAL 

ARCHEOLOGY  AND  OF  THE  GERMAN  ORIENTAL  SOCIETY  ; 

A  uthor  of  "An  Assyrian  Grammar,"  "An  Assyrian  Elementary 
Grammar  and  Reading  Book,"  &>c.  d~V. 


.Scrontf  Gfottion,  Ecbtsrti  antr  (£rtlanjrtr. 


LONDON: 
TRUBNER    &    CO.,    LUDGATE    HILL. 

1875. 

[All  rights  reserved.] 

U  BE  A 

UN  IV  J-  OF 

CALIFOU: 


1$~7± 


PRINTED  BV  BALLANTYNE  AND  COMPANY 
EDINBURGH  AND  LONDON 

S  • 


1S"75~ 


TO 

PROFESSOR  MAX  MULLER, 

WHOSE    WORKS   FIRST    KINDLED    MY    INTEREST    IN    THE 

STUDY   OF   LANGUAGE, 

AND 

WHO   HAS   SINCE   BEEN   TO   ME   A   TEACHER, 

GUIDE,    AND   FRIEND. 


/ 


i. 


SCI 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION. 


The  present  edition  will  be  found  little  more  than 
a  revision  of  the  first.  Two  or  three  inaccuracies 
of  statement  have  been  corrected,  as  well  as  a  few 
misprints,  which  I  much  regret.  What  additional 
matter  there  is  has  been  thrown  into  footnotes 
and  appendices.  Appendix  I.  is  added  not  only 
for  the  sake  of  the  illustration  it  affords  of  the 
way  in  which  the  forgotten  history  of  the  past 
may  be  restored  by  the  help  of  language,  but  also 
in  support  of  the  views  I  have  propounded  in  re- 
gard to  the  Lykian  inscriptions.  The  main  part 
of  the  new  matter  is  contained  in  chapters  III., 
IV.,  and  V.,  especially  chapter  IV. ;  beyond  this 
there  is  little  that  is  fresh  except  the  note  on  the 
story  of  the  Kyklops  in  chapter  VIII. 

I  need  hardly  say  that  the  opinions  contended 
for  in  the  first  edition  have  undergone  no  change 
or  modification.  I  find,  however,  that  what  I 
have  said  on  the  subject  of  roots  has  given  rise  to 
misconceptions,  and  that  my  meaning  has  been 
obscured  by  the  ambiguity  of  the  terms  "  roots  " 
and   u  root-period."      I   fancied   that   I  had   suf- 


VI  PREFACE  TO  SECOND  EDITION. 

ficiently  guarded  myself  against  being  misunder- 
stood ;  but  since  this  does  not  seem  to  have  been 
the  case,  it  is  as  well  to  state  explicitly  the  precise 
doctrine  on  the  matter  which  I  hold.  Roots,  then, 
in  the  lexical  or  grammatical  sense  of  the  term, 
are  those  ultimate  phonetic  elements  discovered 
by  an  analysis  of  groups  of  allied  words,  and  they 
stand  in  the  same  relation  to  words  or  derivatives 
as  letters  and  syllables  do  to  them.  Just  as  words 
are  reduced  into  a  limited  number  of  letters  or 
syllables,  not  in  spoken  language,  but  by  the 
reflective  labours  of  the  grammarian,  so  roots  also 
are  the  product  of  the  lexicographer's  study — the 
elements  into  which  he  chemically  decomposes  all 
speech.  Now  if  the  philologist  assume  that  the 
roots  so  arrived  at  ever  constituted  a  real  language  ^ 
he  would  make  the  same  mistake  as  a  chemist 
who  held  that  his  simple  elements  existed  sepa- 
rately and  independently — not  before  the  existence 
of  the  compounds  into  which  they  entered,  but — 
in  those  compounds  themselves ;  that  oxygen  and 
hydrogen,  for  instance,  are  distinguished  by 
nature  in  the  water  itself,  after  it  has  been 
made.  The  chemist,  however,  must  artificially 
analyse  the  material  wTith  which  he  has  to  deal ; 
and  so  too  must  the  Glottologist,  and  for  scientific 
purposes  he  is  perfectly  justified  in  speaking  of  a 
"  root-period,"  meaning  thereby  a  period  in  the 
history  of  speech  of  which  the  roots  he  has  extracted 
from  the  dictionary  may  give  us  a  faint  idea.  So 
far   as   the  root-period  is  made  synonymous  with 


PREFACE  TO  SECOND  EDITION.  Vll 

the  results  of  his  labours  it  is  purely  imaginary, 
existing  only  in  the  reflective  brain  of  a  modern 
scholar ;  but  since  this  root-period  is  the  best 
Representative  that  we  can  get  of  an  early  synthetic 
stage  in  the  development  of  language  it  may  also 
be  used  to  signify  the  latter.  In  this  case  the 
root  will  be  a  sentence-word,  summing  up  in  one 
whole  what  a  later  stage  of  language  would  break 
up  into  separate  words  or  forms,  the  name  of  an 
individual  object  implying  and  including  subject 
or  object  and  "  verb "  as  well.  Hence  there 
would  be  as  many  sentence-words  as  momentary 
impressions  made  upon  the  senses  by  a  particular 
object ;  and  if  language  rests  upon  onomatopoeia 
or  the  like,  sentence-words  applying  to  the  same 
object  might  be  expected  to  resemble  one  another, 
and  in  this  resemblance  allow  the  philologist  to 
discover  those  types  of  sound  which  he  calls  roots. 
Each  class  of  languages  will  have  its  own  roots, 
and  there  is  no  more  reason  for  assuming  that  the 
roots  of  all  languages  are  the  same  than  there  is 
that  the  languages  themselves  are  the  same.  Of 
course,  in  so  far  as  roots  are  constituted  merely 
by  resemblance  of  allied  sentence-words,  that  is 
in  so  far  as  they  are  the  results  of  lexical  analysis, 
they  will  be  similar  all  the  world  over;  but  if 
we  use  " roots"  in  the  sense  of  the  sentence- 
words  which  lie  at  the  bottom  of  all  developed 
speech,  our  only  knowledge  of  the  characteristics 
of  them  will  be  derived  from  the  phenomena  of 
each  known   language,  and  the  roots  will   differ 


Vlll  PREFACE  TO  SECOND  EDITION. 

one  from  the  other  in  exactly  the  same  way  as  the 
known  languages  do.  The  characteristics  of  a 
Chinese  or  Aryan  root  (when  considered  as  part 
of  a  spoken  language)  are  the  characteristics  of  a 
Chinese  or  Aryan  word ;  and  the  Aryan  root  of 
the  grammarian  is  as  unlike  a  Chinese  word  as  is 
the  grammarian's  Chinese  root  itself. 

It  will  be  seen  that  what  I  believe  to  be  the 
true  doctrine  of  roots  depends  upon  the  axiom  that 
language  starts  with  the  sentence  not  with  the 
isolated  word.  When  my  book  was  published  last 
year  I  imagined  that  the  axiom  was  formally 
enunciated  for  the  first  time,  and  had  no  idea  that 
any  clear  statement  of  it  was  to  be  found  else- 
where. Since  then,  however,  I  have  come  across 
the  highly  instructive  passage  in  "Waltz's  "  An- 
thropologic "  which  is  quoted  in  a  footnote  to 
chapter  IV.  of  the  present  edition,  as  well  as  a 
remarkable  but  long- forgotten  work  published  in 
1831  by  an  anonymous  author,  and  entitled  "  An 
outline  of  Sematology  ;  or  an  Essay  towards  estab- 
lishing a  new  Theory  of  Grammar,  Logic,  and 
Rhetoric."  The  philological  ideas  of  the  writer 
are  naturally  extremely  crude ;  but  the  theory 
upon  which  the  whole  work  is  based,  though 
arrived  at,  it  would  seem,  from  an  a  priori  point 
of  view,  is  substantially  the  same  as  my  own,  and 
is  worked  out  with  great  clearness  and  vigour. 
He  lays  down  that  language  has  originated  out  of 
natural  cries,  each  cry  comprehending  what  we 
should   now  call  a  sentence,  the  several  parts  of 


PREFACE  TO  SECOND  EDITION.  IX 

which  came  in  time  to  be  limited  and  determined 
by  one  another  and  so  passed  into  words.  In  this 
way,  it  is  argued,  perceptions  became  knowledge  ; 
and  the  writer  adds  with  great  truth  (p.  39) : — 
"It  is  not  what  a  word  signifies  that  determines 
it  to  be  this  or  that  part  of  speech,  but  how  it 
assists  other  words  in  making  tip  the  sentence" 
(The  italics, are  his  own.)  Further  on  he  observes 
(p.  55)  that  :  "  The  (separate)  words  of  a  sentence 
are  significant  only  as  the  instrumental  means  for 
getting  at  the  meaning  of  the  whole  sentence 
or  the  whole  discourse.  Till  that  sentence  or 
oration  is  completed,  the  word  is  unsaid  which 
represents  the  speaker's  thoughts."  And  he 
afterwards  points  out  that  the  separate  syllables 
of  a  word  (like  un,  ??iis,  con,  ness,  or  /y),  may  be 
as  significant  as  separate  words. 

As  soon  as  we  admit  that  language  begins  with 
the  sentence  and  that  the  synthetic  is  prior  to  the 
analytic,  an  admission  which  the  facts  of  philology 
seem  to  me  to  force  upon  us,  we  are  driven  to  the 
conclusion  that,  from  one  point  of  view,  at  any 
rate,  the  agglutinative  languages  which  analyse  the 
primitive  sentence  and  distinguish  its  parts  one 
from  the  other,  are  in  advance  of  the  inflectional, 
so  that  were  the  development-theory  true,  the 
inflectional  would  have  developed  into  the  agglu- 
tinative, and  not  the  converse.  We  might  then 
go  on  to  infer  that  the  civilisation  of  the  agglu- 
tinative races  is  higher  than  that  of  the  inflectional 
races,  a  position,  indeed,  which  could  be  defended 


X  PREFACE  TO  SECOND  EDITION. 

on  the  ground  that  the  oldest  civilisations  of  which 
we  know  were  those  of  Turanian  Accad,  of  China 
and  of  Egypt,  and  that  the  beginning  of  culture 
implies  a  higher  mental  effort  than  the  perpetua- 
tion of  it.  At  all  events,  civilisation  and  the 
development  of  language  are  so  intimately  con- 
nected as  to  be  practically  inseparable.  Language 
is  the  reflection  of  society,  creating  and  created 
by  it,  as  well  as  the  outward  expression  of  thought ; 
there  can  be  no  progress  therefore  in  language 
without  a  corresponding  progress  in  the  society 
which  moulds  it  and  the  thought  which  underlies 
if.  The  great  masters  of  philological  science  saw 
of  what  vital  consequence  to  the  development- 
theory  was  the  relation  between  the  several  stages 
of  language  and  the  civilisations  which  were  sup- 
posed to  answer  to  them  ;  and  it  is  on  this  account 
that  I  have  devoted  so  much  space  to  the  endeavour 
to  show  that  this  relation  cannot  be  maintained. 
If  the  parent- Aryan  or  the  inflectional  Hottentot 
had  previously  been  isolating  and  agglutinative, 
the  society  which  they  represented  would  have 
already  passed  through  two  stages  of  civilisation 
analogous  to  the  civilisations  of  China  and  Accad. 
Professor  Max  Midler,  in  his  highly-important 
and  suggestive  lecture  on  "Chronology  as  applied 
to  the  Development  of  Language,"  has  laid  down 
(1)  that  only  where  a  sound  and  rational  analysis 
of  flection  has  been  made  can  it  be  asserted  that 
flection  has  arisen  out  of  agglutination ;  and  (2) 
that  all  the  three  classes  of  language,  isolating, 


PREFACE  TO  SECOND  EDITION.         XI 

agglutinating,  and  inflectional,  trespass  occasion- 
ally on  one  another's  ground,  and  partake  in  some 
measure  of  the  characteristics  which  distinguish 
each.  Thus  Chinese  exhibits  inflectional  as  well 
as  agglutinative  phenomena,  and  a  sentence  like 
je  le  vous  donne,  though  divided  artificially  in 
writing,  can  scarcely  be  said  to  differ  from  a  form 
of  the  Basque  verb.  Here,  as  elsewhere  in  nature, 
one  species  or  family  passes  insensibly  into  another, 
and  the  boundary  line  between  them  cannot  be 
sharply  defined.  But  this  does  not  affect  the 
general  character  of  the  language,  although  those 
who  look  to  the  individual  word — the  product  of 
the  later  age  of  reflection,  analysis  or  literature — 
instead  of  to  the  sentence  may  be  puzzled  how  to 
distinguish  between  the  three  great  classes  of 
speech.  The  existence  of  these  three  great  classes, 
however,  is  a  fact,  but  it  is  equally  a  fact  that  in 
each  of  these  phenomena  occur  which  characterise 
the  other  two.  The  advocates  of  the  development- 
theory  would  do  well  to  consider  this;  and  explain 
how  it  is  that  in  spite  of  the  occurrence  of  inflec- 
tional phenomena  the  agglutinative  family  has 
always  remained  agglutinative,  the  isolating  family 
isolating.  Chinese  possesses  forms  which  may  be 
classed  as  agglutinative,  and  yet  throughout  the 
whole  course  of  its  long  historical  existence  it  has 
continued  as  true  to  its  primitive  type  as  the 
isolating  dialects  of  barbarous  Taic  tribes.  The 
Finnic  verb  may  be  called  inflectional,  but  for  all 
that   the  Finnic  group  is  not  less   agglutinative 


Xll  PREFACE  TO  SECOND  EDITION. 

than  the  Accadian  of  4000  years  ago.  Aryan  has 
always  been  inflectional,  so  far  back  as  our  verifi- 
able facts  allow  us  to  go,  and  to  postulate  for  it 
a  preceding  era  of  agglutination  is  an  hypothesis 
which  has  all  history  against  it.  The  cases  of  the 
Semitic  noun  wrere  formed,  not  by  juxta-position, 
not  by  agglutination,  but  by  the  adaptation  of 
vowel-differences ;  in  the  Aryan  family  itself  cer- 
tain instances  of  flection  can  be  proved  to  have 
originated  in  mere  euphonic  distinctions  of  sound; 
and  as  TTestphal  remarks  ("  Vergleichende  Gram- 
matik  der  indogermaniscken  Sprachen,"  p.  xvii.), 
we  ought  not  to  ask  "  Can  agglutination  become 
flection  ?  "  but,  "  Why  has  it  not  become  so  ?  "  If 
the  gradual  growth  of  the  preposition  to  the  verb 
in  composition  or  the  history  of  the  augment  show 
that  our  family  of  speech  was  originally  aggluti- 
native, what  explanation  can  be  given  of  the  fact 
that  the  Finnic  idioms  are  still  agglutinative 
though  the  verbal  forms  are  inflectional  ?  A  lan- 
guage remains  true  to  its  type  and  makes  the  new 
products  of  speech  conform  to  it  by  the  power  of 
analogy,  but  analogy  is  powerless  where  there  is 
no  type  to  which  to  conform.  The  development- 
theory  is  an  hypothesis,  unproved  and  unprovable  ; 
as  a  merely  working  hypothesis  it  has  no  doubt 
done  good  service  ;  but  it  is  time  we  should  awake 
to  the  discovery  that  though  it  explains  some  facts, 
there  are  other  facts  which  it  not  only  does  not 
explain  but  which  are  wholly  incompatible  with 
it.     Perhaps    the    truth    which    it   1ms    shadowed 


PREFACE  TO  SECOND  EDITION.  Xlll 

forth,  with  exclusive  regard  to  the  outward  material 
of  speech,  would  be  better  expressed  by  keeping 
the  eyes  fixed  on  the  inward  and  mental,  and 
holding  that  whereas  in  the  first  stasre  of  Ian- 
guage  thought  was,  as  it  were,  absorbed  in  its 
expression,  the  two  factors  being  equally  balanced 
in  the  second  stage,  in  the  third  stage  expression 
has  to  give  way  to  thought,  and  we  are  conscious 
of  the  meaning  rather  than  the  phonetic  sound  of 
our  utterances. 

There  is  one  point  more  to  be  noticed.  The 
convenient  distinction  between  derivative  and  flec- 
tion al  suffixes  is  as  much  the  work  of  a  reflective 
grammarian  as  is  the  so-called  root.  To  convert  the 
logical  into  the  historical,  and  declare  that  the  dif- 
ference which  analysis  has  drawn  between  the  two 
kinds  of  suffixes  was  once  an  historical  fact,  is 
quite  unwarranted.  It  hangs  together  with  the 
attempt  to  transmute  all  the  case-endings  from  the 
very  first  into  pronominal  or,  at  any  rate,  inde- 
pendent words.  So  far  as  I  can  see,  many  of  the 
flections  were  formative  suffixes  before  they  were 
turned  to  their  later  use.  The  objective,  the 
oldest  case  of  the  noun,  still  shows  traces  of  its 
orioin  even  in  Aryan,  and  the  case-endings  of  the 
Semitic  languages  bear  their  purely  euphonic  de- 
scent upon  their  face.  The  distinction  between 
the  formative  and  flectional  part  of  a  word  was 
worked  out  gradually  by  the  developing  thought 
which  found  phonetic  machinery  in  plenty  already 
existing  for  its  expression.     One   of  the  earliest 


»/ 


XIV  PREFACE  TO  SECOND  EDITION. 

contrivances  of  language  for  elaborating  the  rela- 
tions of  grammar  out  of  the  sentence  was  the 
combination  of  a  class-word  with  some  other  that 
served  to  define  it.  Such  determinatives  are  still 
employed  largely  in  the  Taic  languages  of  further 
India,  and  out  of  the  44,500  words  in  the  Chinese 
Imperial  Dictionary  of  Kang-hi,  1097  begin  with 
(or  are  formed  upon)  sin  "  the  heart."  Even  in 
Accadian,  words  may  be  lengthened  by  a  final 
vowel  like  babbara  by  the  side  of  babbar  without 
any  necessary  change  of  signification. 

A.  H.  SAYCE. 

March  1875. 


PREFACE  TO  THE  FIRST  EDITION. 


The  substance  of  the  first  eight  of  the  following 
chapters  was  originally  delivered  in  the  form  of 
lectures  at  Oxford  in  the  early  part  of  1873.  The 
last  chapter  is  a  subsequent  addition  which  should 
strictly  be  regarded  as  an  appendix  of  the  first. 
The  detailed  treatment  of  a  single  philological 
principle  in  it  is  so  disproportionate  to  the  general 
plan  of  the  book,  that  its  introduction  can  only  be 
defended  on  the  double  ground  of  the  great  and  far- 
reaching  influence  of  analogy,  and  the  scant  attention 
it  has  hitherto  received.  In  tracing  its  action,  I 
have  had  to  review  all  the  various  parts  of  the 
science  of  language  ;  and  practical  illustrations  of 
this  kind  may  be  more  efficacious  than  pages  of 
abstract  argument,  in  showing  clearly  what  I  believe 
to  be  comprehended  within  the  limits  of  Glottology, 
and  in  summing  up  the  results  I  have  tried  to  make 
good  in  the  preceding  chapters. 

For  the  sphere  and  subject-matter  of  Comparative 
Philology  are  very  liable  to  be  unduly  narrowed. 
The  danger  lies  not  so  much  with  the  followers  of 


XV111  PREFACE  TO  FIRST  EDITION. 

the  head  of  Comparative  Grammar  is  included 
comparative  syntax,  a  most  important  branch  of 
study,  but  one  which  is  only  beginning  to  be  worked. 
A  thorough-going  investigation  of  it  may  throw 
light  on  the  difficult  question  as  to  the  possibility 
of  a  mixed  grammar ;  and  Mr  Edkins  already 
believes  that  he  can  detect  the  influence  of  Semitic 
idiom  upon  the  doctrine  of  the  relative  and  the  defi- 
nite article  in  Greek.  The  origin  of  language  itself 
must  be  left  to  other  sciences  to  reveal,  but  there  is 
no  reason  to  despair  of  our  eventually  determining 
this  problem  of  problems.  Glottology,  however,  has 
to  postulate  the  existence  of  conscious  and  articulate 
speech ;  all  that  it  can  do  is  to  point  the  way  to  the 
true  solution  of  the  riddle,  to  show  what  is  the  con- 
clusion towards  which  its  body  of  facts  and  evidence 
is  tending.  But  this  does  not  prevent  the  solution  of 
the  riddle  being  of  the  utmost  importance  to  it ;  on 
the  contrary,  like  the  law  of  gravitation  in  astronomy, 
a  knowledge  of  the  genesis  of  speech  will  bind  together 
the  empirical  generalisations  of  language,  and  give  the 
reason  for  their  special  character.  We  cannot  pro- 
perly be  said  to  know  a  subject,  or  to  trace  the  course 
of  its  development,  until  we  are  able  to  resolve  it  into 
its  original  elements,  and  to  discover  how  and  out  of 
what  it  arose. 

The  following  pages,  it  will  be  seen,  are  rather 
critical  than  constructive.  New  theories  have  in- 
deed been  put  forward  in  regard  to  mythology, 
and  such  points   as   gender   and  number ;    but  the 


PREFACE  TO  FIRST  EDITION.  XIX 

chief  feature  of  the  first  seven  chapters  of  the  book 
is  a  criticism  of  certain  generally-received  hypotheses 
which  underlie  a  good  deal  of  current  philological 
reasoning,  but  which  do  not  stand,  as  it  seems  to  me, 
the  test  of  facts.  These  hypotheses  may  be  reduced 
to  three  axiomatic  assumptions,  against  which  the 
present  rough-hewn  work,  however  devoid  of  the  graces 
of  style,  and  bristling  with  uncouth  words,  is  intended 
to  be  a  protest.  The  belief  that  the  Aryan  languages 
are  the  standard  of  all  others,  and  that  the  generali- 
sations gathered  from  their  exceptional  phenomena 
are  laws  of  universal  validity  ;  the  substitution  of  the  v" 
mechanical  and  the  outward  for  the  intellectual  and 
the  inward ;  the  confusion  between  the  convenient 
classifications  of  science  and  actual  divisions  into 
natural  "  families," — these  are  the  three  assumptions 
which,  though  maintained  unconsciously,  and  rejected 
by  most  students  when  presented  in  their  crude  form, 
are  yet  the  real  causes  of  certain  fashionable  theories 
which  have  even  been  elevated  into  "the  most  un- 
questionable results  of  modern  philology."  First  and 
foremost  among  these  is  the  doctrine  of  a  graduated 
evolution  of  speech  through  an  isolating  and  aggluti- 
native into  an  inflectional  stage — a  doctrine  which 
rests  upon  the  second  assumption,  and  explains  the 
forms  of  grammar  by  the  accidents  of  phonetic  decay. 
When  will  it  be  recognised  that  the  growth  of  most 
of  our  present  flections  out  of  independent  words 
indicates  not  a  primitive  agglutination,  but  a  pre- 
existing inflectional  instinct  or  analogy,  which  they 


XX  PREFACE  TO  FIRST  EDITION. 

could  but  follow,  and  that  the  near  approach  of  cer- 
tain members  of  the  agglutinative  group — the  Finnic 
idioms,  for  example — to  some  of  the  phenomena  of 
inflection,  only  proves  the  fixed  character  of  their 
mental  point  of  view,  which  remained  true  to  its 
agglutinative  type  although  the  outward  crust  of  lan- 
guage, the  phonetic  expression  of  the  inward  thought, 
had  done  its  utmost  to  bring  about  a  change  ? 

Had  it  been  remembered  in  what  language  really 
consists,  we  should  have  heard  less  of  letters  and 
more  of  sounds,  less  of  outward  form  and  more  of 
inward  meaning,  less  of  phonetic  decay  and  more  of 
analogy  ;  the  philologist  would  have  betaken  himself 
to  the  study  of  living  speech  rather  than  of  dead 
literature,  and  have  learned  that,  instead  of  starting 
with  the  written  crystallised  word,  he  should  have 
begun  with  the  only  actual  whole  of  which  language 
knows — the  sentence.  Had  the  sentence  been  made 
the  basis  of  research,  little  would  have  been  said  of 
an  agglutinative  background  to  Aryan  speech,  or  of 
a  time  when  men  talked  with  one  another  in  roots. 
But,  in  fact,  the  larger  part  of  the  strange  hypotheses 
which  the  discovery  of  roots  has  called  forth,  are 
mostly  dependent  on  the  first  assumption.  I  feel 
confident  that  the  world  would  never  have  heard 
of  "  pronominal  roots "  had  the  Turanian  tongues 
been  the  primary  subject  of  inquiry,  nor  would  the 
supposed  necessity  of  finding  biliteral  radicals  have 
made  such  wild  havoc  in  the  Semitic  family.  Even 
the  term  u family"  itself  calls  up  erroneous  ideas. 


PREFACE  TO  FIRST  EDITION.  XXI 

The  days  are  passed  indeed  when  philological  and 
ethnological  unity  were  imagined  to  be  identical,  but 
we  still  picture  to  ourselves  a  "  family  of  languages  " 
like  a  family  in  social  life,  except  that  it  springs  not 
from  two  ancestors,  but  from  one.  Such  pictures, 
however,  are  but  the  convenient  symbols  of  working 
science,  and,  if  pressed  too  literally,  lead  to  conclu- 
sions the  reverse  of  the  truth.  Simplicity  and  unifi- 
cation are  the  latest  result  of  time,  and  instead  of 
forcing  all  the  known  dialects  of  the  world  under  a 
few  neatly  labelled  classes  or  "  families,"  we  should 
rather  wonder  that  more  waifs  and  strays  have  not 
come  down  to  us  out  of  the  infinite  essays  of  early 
speech. 

The  arguments  with  which  I  have  endeavoured  to 
combat  these  and  similar  views  are  founded  upon 
three  or  four  postulates.  Language  is  social,  not 
individual,  interpreting  the  society  of  the  past,  and 
interpreted  by  the  society  of  the  present ;  it  starts 
with  the  sentence,  not  with  the  word  ;  it  is  the 
expression  of  thought,  so  that  all  explanations  of  its 
phenomena  which  rest  contented  with  its  outward 
form  alone  must  be  inadequate  or  erroneous  ;  and  its 
study,  if  carried  on  by  the  light  of  the  comparative 
method,  ousrht  to  embrace  all  the  manifold  opera- 
tions  and  products  of  thought  which  are  embodied 
in  spoken  utterance.  These  are  the  principles  which 
underlie  the  following  pages,  and  will  furnish  the  key 
to  what  I  have  written.  Throughout,  I  have  presup- 
posed an  acquaintance  with  Professor  Max  Miiller's 


XXli  PREFACE  TO  FIRST  EDITION. 

''Lectures  on  the  Science  of  Language,"  to  whose 
world-wide  popularity  Comparative  Philology  owes 
its  present  position  and  its  present  charm.  My  in- 
debtedness to  their  wealth  of  illustration  will  be 
apparent  to  every  reader,  and  the  familiar  character 
of  the  work  has  relieved  me  of  the  necessity  of  en- 
cumbering my  book  with  frequent  references  to  it. 


A.  H.  SAYCE. 


Queen's  College,  Oxford, 
May  1874. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAP.  PAGE 

I.    THE   SPHERE   OP    COMPARATIVE    PHILOLOGY,    AND   ITS 

RELATION  TO  THE  OTHER  SCIENCES  .  .  1 

II.    THE      IDOLA     OF     GLOTTOLOGY — THE     LAWS     OP     THE 

SCIENCE    DETERMINED    FROM    THE    ARYAN    FAMILY 

ALONE  ......  62 

III.  THE  IDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES  OF  LANGUAGE         .  96 

IV.  THE    THEORY   OF   THREE    STAGES   OF   DEVELOPMENT  IN 

THE  HISTORY  OF  LANGUAGE                 .                 .                .  132 

V.   THE  POSSIBILITY   OF   MIXTURE   IN   THE  GRAMMAR  AND 

VOCABULARY  OF  A  LANGUAGE             .                 .                 .  175 

VI.   THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS              ....  214 

VII.    THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE              .                .                 .  258 

VIII.    COMPARATIVE      MYTHOLOGY     AND      THE     SCIENCE      OF 

RELIGION  .....  299 

IX.    THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE        .  .  345 

APPENDIX  I. — THE  ROUTE  FOLLOWED  BY  THE  WESTERN 

ARYANS  IN  THEIR  MIGRATION  INTO  EUROPE  .  3S9 

APPENDIX  II. — ORIGIN  OF  THE  CASE-ENDINGS  IN  ARYAN  396 

INDEX  ......  405 


ANALYSIS  OF  THE  CHAPTERS. 


I.  Data  of  glottology  accessible  to  every  one — 
Language  the  characteristic  of  man — objects  of  a  science 
— Glottology  still  young  and  forced  to  put  forth  pro- 
visional hypotheses — these  must  be  tested  from  time  to 
time — nature  of  scientific  hypotheses — scientific  know- 
ledge is  comparative — the  science  of  language,  therefore, 
is  the  application  of  the  comparative  method  to  phonology 
and  sematology — not  to  be  confused  with  "scholarship" 
— not  an  exact  science — uniformity  of  nature  assumed — 
words  (or  derivatives)  and  languages  compared  and 
classified,  grammar  and  structure  forming  the  basis  of 
classification — the  laws  of  the  science  determined  there- 
by— the  laws  (1)  primary  and  (2)  empirical — action  of 
both  affected  by  the  two  principles  of  Laziness  (Phonetic 
Decay)  and  Emphasis — nature  and  effects  of  phonetic 
decay — and  of  emphasis  (which  embraces  Dialectic 
Eegeneration) — Glottology  defined  as  an  inductive  his- 
torical science — historical  more  complex  than  physical 
sciences ;  but  yet  possible — language  social  not  in- 
dividual; therefore  an  object  of  scientific  treatment — 
the  Facts  of  the  science  are  words  or  judgments  ;  we  can 
trace  its  laws  only  where  these  exist — definition  of  Com- 


XXVI       ANALYSIS  OF  THE  CHAPTERS. 

parative  Philology  and  relation  of  Psychology  and  Phon- 
ology to  it — its  relation  to  other  sciences,  especially  the 
social  ones — its  laws  (especially  the  empirical)  verified 
by  History  (whence  the  value  of  modern  European 
languages)  and  Psychology — starting-point  of  Compara- 
tive Philology  ;  and  relation  of  Physiology  to  it — does 
not  treat  of  gestures  or  the  origin  of  language — Rules 
to  be  observed  by  the  student — significant  change — name 
of  the  science  and  its  relation  to  special  philology. 

II.  Xature  and  use  of  hypotheses— Ary an  philo- 
logy made  the  standard  and  key  of  all  philology — reasons 
of  this  idolum — sometimes  not  even  all  Aryan  philology 
embraced — instances  of  false  theories  which  rest  on  the 
assumption  that  the  laws  of  Aryan  philology  are  of  uni- 
versal validity — (1)  that  the  roots  of  all  languages  are 
monosyllabic — (2)  that  all  roots  were  originally  verbal 
— (3)  that  grammar  and  vocabulary  are  similar  among 
all  members  of  the  same  family — the  origin  of  the  verbal 
expression  in  Aryan  can  be  understood  only  by  a  com- 
parison of  other  groups  of  languages. 

III.  Causes  of  a  desire  for  unity — all  things 
summed  up  in  "  the  world  " — meaning  of  the  term — 
wish  to  trace  all  languages  to  a  single  source  or  two  or 
three  centres — all  the  facts  against  this — Aryan  and 
Semitic  not  from  a  common  source — what  the  facts  are  : 
structure,  grammar,  and  vocabulary  must  be  alike,  with 
a  regular  interchange  of  letters — only  a  general  likeness 
in  all  language:  allied  "families"  the  exception — no 
argument  from  the  fluctuating  state  of  savage  speech — 
Lykian  and  Etruscan  cannot  be  legitimately  classified — 


ANALYSIS  OF  THE  CHAPTERS.  XX\rii 

or  the  Caucasian  dialects — Georgian,  though  inflectional, 
not  Aryan — modern  languages,  like  modern  races,  the 
selected  residuum  of  infinitely  various  extinct  species — 
slang  and  "new  tongues"  a  reversion  to  primitive  pro- 
ductiveness— savage  communities  isolated  and  small; 
and  constantly  change  their  languages — a  language 
breaks  out  into  dialects  when  it  ceases  to  be  literary — 
separate  societies  imply  separate  languages — civilisation 
unifies — conclusion. 

IV.  Theory  of  three  stages  of  development  in 
THE  history  of  speech — definition  of  a  word — lan- 
guage based  on  the  sentence  not  on  the  isolated  word — 
hence  flection  really  belongs  to  an  earlier  stage  of  develop- 
ment than  agglutination — languages  differ  in  the  concep- 
tion of  the  sentence — agglutinative  languages,  though  pre- 
senting the  phenomena  of  inflection,  remain  agglutina- 
tive; flectional  languages,  though  admitting  agglutination, 
remain  inflectional — the  idea  that  the  existence  of  flec- 
tional phenomena  must  lead  to  flection  due  to  our 
speaking  inflected  languages — different  races  have  dif- 
ferent potentialities — the  development-theory  disproved 
by  history — Chinese  and  Accadian  civilisation  show 
that  mental  development  does  not  imply  " development" 
of  language  through  the  three  stages  ;  but  since  language 
is  based  on  the  sentence  and  reflects  society  it  must 
imply  this  development  were  the  theory  true — the  poly- 
synthetic  and  incorporating  languages  overlooked  by 
the  theory — the  theory  suggested  by  a  (grammatical) 
analysis  of  Aryan  flection — verbal  flection  has  grown  out 
of  agglutination — case-flection  not  successfully  analysed 
— Professor  Curtius's  arguments   answered — the   cases 


XXV111  ANALYSIS  OF  THE  CHAPTERS. 

have  not  grown  out  of  "  pronominal  roots  " — not  so 
formed  in  agglutinative  languages — meaningless  suffixes 
adapted  to  express  a  new  case-relation  ivhen  first  struck  out 
— the  Semitic  cases  distinguished  by  vocalic  differences 
only — verb  later  than  the  noun — meaning  of  words  first 
determined  by  their  position  in  the  sentence;  then 
attached  to  their  hitherto  meaningless  suffixes — hence 
the  same  suffix  denotes  different  cases  in  different  Aryan 
languages  or  in  the  same  language — these  meaningless 
suffixes  shown  to  have  existed  in  Aryan  and  Semitic — 
the  case-endings  like  these  suffixes — independent  words 
when  used  symbolically  made  to  conform  to  the  inflec- 
tional character  of  the  Ian2;ua2;e — the  inflectional  instinct 
less  strong  now — no  proof  that  some  of  the  case-suffixes 
were  independent  words — if  they  were,  it  would  imply 
retrogression — "  pronominal  roots  "  imaginary — histori- 
cal proofs  that  new  inflections  arise  by  adapting  old 
suffixes  to  mark  a  new  relation — the  synthetic  and  com- 
plex prior  to  the  analytic  and  simple ;  what  is  logically 
first  not  historically  so — Aryan  languages  always  inflec- 
tional so  far  as  v:e  know — arguments  against  a  primitive 
isolating  stage  stronger  than  against  a  primitive  agglu- 
tinative one — men  could  not  talk  in  roots — Chinese  words 
not  roots — roots  contain  no  sentences;  therefore  could 
constitute  no  language — roots  discovered  by  grammatical 
analysis  no  real  language — language  is  an  organism  only 
metaphorically — the  different  stages  of  development  in 
language  represented  by  different  races. 

V.  Language  test  of  social  contact,  not  of  race — 
examples — a  whole  language  not  necessarily  borrowed — 
possibility  of  a  mixed  grammar — idioms  borrowed — also 


ANALYSIS  OF  THE  CHAPTERS.  XXIX 

the  relation  of  subject  and  "attribute — the  Pehlevi  in- 
scriptions— the  North  Indian  and  North  African  dialects 
— words  denoting  the  relations  of  the  noun  may  he  borrowed 
when  a  language  becomes  analytic — pronunciation  influ- 
enced by  neighbouring  languages — borrowed  words  re- 
veal the  relations  of  nations  and  civilisations  to  one 
another — but  do  not  prove  a  negative — objects  known  by 
the  same  name  in  different  languages  must  have  been 
known  to  the  speakers  \  but  the  converse  does  not  hold  good 
— a  borrowed  word  may  be  subjected  to  the  laws  of 
lautverschiebung — borrowed  words  not  to  be  confused 
with  words  accidentally  similar  in  sound — we  must  know 
on  which  side  the  debt  lies — examples. 

VI.  Language,  the  reflection  of  society,  origin- 
ally communistic — words  have  been  differentiated  out 
of  sentences — compounds  of  late  growth — the  original 
types  of  language  discoverable  by  comparison — nature 
of  these  Roots — roots  differ  in  different  languages — if 
spoken,  could  not  have  had  an  abstract  meaning — 
objects  named  from  their  (sensible)  qualities — the  name 
of  the  individual  could  be  expressed  only  as  part  of  a 
sentence — the  Epithet-stage  of  language — implies  fixity 
— ceremonial  languages — period  of  the  creation  of 
the  personal  pronouns — period  of  analysis — sentences 
changed  according  to  the  momentary  impression  upon 
the  senses;  hence  sentence-words  innumerable — lexical 
roots  the  residuum  of  numberless  sentence-words — roots 
dissyllabic — attempts  to  explain  the  origin  of  language 
—the  question  not  insoluble  or  useless  but  beyond  the 
sphere  of  Glottology — decomposition  of  Aryan  "roots" 
— views  of  Pott  and  Curtius — analysis  not  to  be  carried 


XXX  ANALYSIS  OF  THE  CHAPTERS. 

too  far — some  natural  cries  polysyllabic — clicks — pho- 
netic decay  (or  regular  letter  change) — indistinctness  of 
primitive  sounds — the  oldest  roots  purely  sensuous — 
theory  of  Pronominal  Roots  examined — roots  peculiar  to 
different  dialects  of  the  Aryan  family — what  lexical 
roots  really  are. 

VII.  Meaning  of  "  metaphysics  of  language  n 
— first  Greek  grammar  by  Dionysius  Thrax — belief  in 
the  conventional  origin  of  grammar — how  the  concep- 
tions of  grammar  are  to  be  analysed — outward  form 
symbolic — illustrations  :  Gender  originates  in  different 
pronoun  suffixes  ;  the  Dual  prior  to  the  Plural ;  the  Ob- 
jective case  the  most  primitive  form  of  the  noun ;  the 
origin  of  the  Genitive  ;  and  of  the  Persons  of  the  verb — 
conclusion. 

VIII.  Thought  and  language  cannot  be  sepa- 
rated— words  may  influence  thought — original  mean- 
ing of  words  forgotten  and  new  meaning  assigned — 
names  when  first  given  sum  up  existing  knowledge — as 
society  and  knowledge  progress  they  become  mislead- 
ing and  produce  Mythology — Mythology,  therefore,  must 
be  explained  by  the  history  of  words,  the  fossils  of  the 
past  strata  of  society  and  knowledge — "faded  meta- 
phors"— but  only  external  side  of  mythology  explained 
by  words ;  not  Religious  Instinct  which  underlies  and 
preserves  it — our  knowledge  of  the  development  of  this 
religious  instinct  derived  from  language — difference  be- 
tween a  Religion  and  Mythology — mythology. precedes  a 
religion  and  generally  colours  it — the  Dogmas  of  religion 
explicable  by  the  history  of  language — hence  both  Com- 


ANALYSIS  OF  THE  CHAPTERS.  XXXI 

parative  Mythology  and  the  Science  of  Eeligions  branches 
of  Glottology — the  records  of  the  oldest  religions  locked 
up  in  dead  languages — religion  the  expression  of  society  and 
the  history  of  society  given  by  language — only  those  myths  to 
be  compared  which  are  supported  by  etymological  evidence — 
the  Iliad — similar  myths  arise  independently  among 
uncivilised  races — history  cannot  be  extracted  from  myths 
where  historical  evidence  is  wanting — the  ''XibelungenLied'"' 
— Euhemerism — what  is  native  and  borrowed  must  be 
distinguished  in  mythology — story  of  the  Ivrklops — 
Allegory  and  Fable  contrasted  with  Myth — origin  of 
Totemism — Eponymous  ancestors — the  religious  instinct 
first  shows  itself  in  the  worship  of  dead  ancestors — 
hence  origin  of  Serpent-worship — animal  wants  insti- 
gated worship — Fetichism,  second  stage  of  development — 
germs  of  a  mythology — worship  of  Nature,  co-eval  with 
Epithet-stage  and  a  developed  Mythology — why  few 
myths  about  the  moon — objects  of  nature  anthropomor- 
phised — this  perpetuated  in  language  {i.e.,  mythology) 
— objections  to  comparative  mythology:  (1)  too  high, 
and  (2)  too  feeble  an  imagination  presupposed  in  early 
man — solar  origin  of  some  myths  2^roved  by  the  Pig- 
Veda  and  non-Aryan  mythologies — other  objections — 
Dogmatology  :  how  religions  must  be  compared. 

IX.  Importance  of  the  principle  of  analogy  and 
relation  TO  IT  OF  phonetic  DECAY — what  is  meant  by 
false  analogy — analogy  acts  upon  both  the  Form  and  the 
Content  of  speech — the  action  of  analogy  due  to  Laziness 
and  Imitation — roots  which  differ  in  meaning  not 
necessarily  unallied — changes  affected  by  analogy  in 
Accent ;  in  Quantity ;  and  in  Phonology — explanation  of 


XXXU      ANALYSIS  OF  THE  CHAPTERS. 

Grimm's  law — false  analogies  in  the  Homeric  Poems — 
analogy  creative  in  the  material  of  language  (euphonic 
differences  made  significant) — vowel-change  as  originat- 
ing flection  in  Aryan — effect  of  analogy  on  Grammatical 
Forms ;  on  Structure  \  and  on  Syntax — position  of  the 
verb — influence  of  analogy  on  the  Meaning  of  words — 
popular  etymologies  :  analogy  and  mythology — mis- 
taken etymologies  in  Homer — affectation  of  archaism 
in  the  Odyssey — modern  English  spelling — origin  and 
nature  of  Poetry  and  Rhyme — conclusion. 


r\ 


LI  BR  A  R  V 

1    X  J  VKilSITV    OF 


THE    PRINCIPLES 


OF 


COMPARATIVE     PHILOLOGY 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE   SPHERE  OF  COMPARATIVE   PHILOLOGY  AND  ITS   RELATION 
TO   THE   OTHER   SCIENCES. 

Among  the  mart}-  new  departments  of  study  which 
have  been  called  into  existence  by  the  extension  of 
the  scientific  method,  there  is  none  that  possesses 
greater  interest  than  Comparative  Philology.  It 
is,  on  the  one  hand,  so  closely  bound  up  with  the 
history  of  mankind  in  general,  while,  on  the  other, 
it  enters  so  largely  into  the  life  of  the  private 
individual,  that  there  are  none  whose  attention  it 
ought  not  to  excite.  We  have  no  need,  as  in  eth- 
nology or  botany,  to  collect  from  outside  the  pre- 
liminary facts  upon  which  the  science  is  built : 
the  facts  of  Comparative  Philology  are  literally 
in  the  mouths  of  every  one ;  they  are  the  words 
which  we  speak,  the  thoughts  which  we  clothe  in 

A 


2  SPHERE  OF  COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY. 

articulate    language,    the    indispensable    links   of 
union  which    bind    together    a    civilised   society. 
While  we  are  thus  favourably  placed  in  regard  to 
the  materials  of  our  study,  the  study  itself  appeals 
at  once  to  our  reason,  our  imagination,  and  our 
curiosity.     Language  peculiarly  belongs  to  man; 
it  is  the  most  characteristic  mark  of  distinction 
between   him   and    the    brute ;    and   the    careful 
examination  of  it  seems  therefore  especially  appro- 
priate to  him.     The  object  of  all  science,  it  may 
be  presumed,  is  twofold  :  to  obtain  such  a  know- 
ledge of  nature  and  its  laws  as  shall  enable  us  to 
combine    and    control    them    practically    for    our 
future  use  and  benefit.     Years  have  not  deprived 
the  old  Delphic  oracle  of  its  truth,  and  a  know- 
ledge  of  ourselves    is   still   the  most    important 
that  we   can   acquire.     The   improvement  of  the 
species,   the    amelioration    of   society,   the    well- 
being  and  happiness  of  the   individual,  are   the 
most    pressing    questions    of    our    age.      But    to 
answer  these    satisfactorily,   we   must  know   the 
laws  which  govern  the  race  and  the  individual, 
and  the  way  in  which  we  have  arrived  at  our  pre- 
sent condition.     Every  new  discovery  confirms  the 
theory  of  progressive  development :  man  was  not 
once  what  he  now  is ;  and  the  long  series  of  cen- 
turies  that  lie  behind  us  have  seen   him   slowly 
changing  with  changing  circumstances,  and  gra- 


RELATION  TO  THE  OTHER  SCIENCES.  3 

dually  moulded  by  the  experiences  and  habits  of 
former  generations.  It  is  not  the  outward  form 
of  man  that  concerns  us  now ;  that,  indeed,  may 
have  altered,  and  the  long  ape-like  jaw  of  the 
primitive  savage  have  contracted  into  the  mouth 
of  a  Cleopatra  or  a  Mary  Queen  of  Scots.  But  the 
change  of  external  shape  has  little  interest  for  the 
politician  and  philanthropist ;  it  is  rather  an  index 
of  deeper  spiritual  changes  than  the  cause  of  them ; 
and  with  these  more  secret  and  subtle  changes 
the  student  of  society  has  alone  to  do.  It  is  the 
development  of  the  moral  and  intellectual  life  of 
mankind  a  knowledge  of  which  is  so  necessary 
if  we  would  understand  the  present  state  of  so- 
ciety, and  rightly  set  about  its  improvement.  But 
over  the  first  beginnings  of  this  moral  and  intel- 
lectual life — the  very  foundations  of  it,  without 
which  all  the  superstructure  is  but  half  intelligible 
— there  is  drawn,  as  it  were,  the  veil  of  Isis,  and 
the  veil  can  only  be  lifted  by  the  interpreter  of 
the  symbol.  Such  an  interpreter  is  language,  the 
mediator  between  the  spiritual  and  the  physical, 
which  records  the  varying  phases  of  human 
thought  in  enduring  symbol  and  sensuous  meta- 
phor, like  the  rocks  which  bear  witness  to  the 
climate  and  zoology  of  remote  geological  eras.  If 
we  are  to  look  anywhere  for  the  solution  of  some 
of  the   highest  problems  connected  with  the  his- 


4  SPHERE  OF  COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY. 

tory  of  our  species,  it  must  be,  above  all,  to  the 
science  of  language.  Already  much  has  been 
done  by  it ;  not  the  least  good  being  the  clearance 
of  many  old  prepossessions  and  beliefs  that  blocked 
up  the  path  of  inquiry,  and  distorted  all  the  evi- 
dence that  might  be  presented  to  the  mind. 

But  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  science  is 
still  in  its  infancy,  and  more  has  been  expected 
from  it  than  its  present  stage  of  advancement 
would  legitimately  allow  us  to  demand.  Many 
causes  have  combined  to  give  an  impetus  in  the 
present  day  to  the  investigation  of  the  historical 
sciences — those,  namely,  which  deal  with  man  and 
his  works,  and  to  the  study  of  social  phenomena. 
Ready  conclusions  and  rapid  generalisations  are 
wanted  ;  answers  to  the  many  questions  which  are 
starting  up  on  all  sides  cannot  be  waited  for ;  and 
the  Comparative  Philologist  is  accordingly  called 
upon  to  furnish  the  key  or  suggest  the  solution  of 
numerous  difficulties.  His  situation  is  a  tempt- 
ing one.  Knowing,  as  he  does,  how  much  certain 
ground  has  already  been  won,  and  acquainted 
with  a  further  range  of  data  from  which  he  is 
only  too  well  disposed  to  draw  hasty  inferences, 
he  is  ready  to  take  his  seat  on  the  tripod,  and 
deliver  dogmatic  statements  which  are  received 
by  the  general  public  as  so  many  ascertained 
facts.     If  put  forward  as  provisional  hypotheses 


RELATION  TO  THE  OTHER  SCIENCES.        5 

only,  intended  to  represent  the  sum  total  of  the 
evidence  upon  some  particular  subject  which  the 
inquirer  had  at  his  disposal,  such  statements 
would  have  great  value  ;  but  the  mischief  done  is 
immense  when  they  are  made  and  received  as  of 
equal  authority  with  the  ground-principles  of  the 
science,  and  become  so  many  propositions  which 
may  not  be  contradicted.  It  is,  indeed,  the  lot  of 
all  new  sciences ;  but  none  the  less  necessary  on 
that  account  to  be  foreseen  and  guarded  against. 

A  man's  foes,  it  has  been  said,  are  those  of  his 
own  household.  Comparative  Philology  has  suffered 
as  much  from  its  friends  as  from  its  opponents  ; 
and  now  that  it  has  at  last  won  its  way  to  general 
recognition  and  respect,  there  is  a  danger  that  its 
popularity  may  lead  to  the  cessation  of  sound  and 
honest  work,  and  to  an  acquiescence  in  theories 
which,  however  plausible,  are  not  yet  placed  upon 
a  footing  of  scientific  certainty.  The  great  names 
to  whom  the  scientific  study  of  language  owes  its 
origin  are  passing  away  from  among  us,  and  there 
is  reason  to  fear  that  their  places  may  be  taken  by 
patient  plodders,  content  to  work  out  small  de- 
tails, and  to  walk  in  the  paths  already  traced  for 
them,  rather  than  to  criticise  and  re-examine  the 
magnificent  generalisations  of  their  masters,  and 
to  further  the  progress  of  the  study  by  fresh  hypo- 
theses of  their  own.     Newton  was  followed  by  a 


6  SPHERE  OF  COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY. 

century  of  stagnation,  and  Aristotle's  successors 
were  the  grammarians  of  Alexandria.  Geniuses 
are  rare,  and  it  is  much  easier  for  the  ordinary 
man  to  fill  in  by  patient  elaboration  what  has 
already  been  sketched  for  him  in  outline,  than  to 
venture  upon  a  new  line  of  discovery,  in  which 
the  sole  clue  must  be  the  combinative  powers  of 
his  own  imagination  and  comprehensive  learning. 
And  yet,  now  as  much  as  ever  Comparative  Philo- 
logy has  need  at  once  of  bold  and  wide-reaching 
conceptions,  of  cautious  verification,  and  of  a 
mastery  of  facts.  It  is  true  the  science  is  no 
longer  struggling  for  mere  life,  and  the  time  is 
gone  by  for  proving  the  possibility  of  its  existence. 
But  it  is  still  young,  scarcely,  indeed,  out  of  its 
nursery  ;  a  small  portion  only  of  its  province  has 
hitherto  been  investigated,  and  much  that  is  at 
present  accepted  without  hesitation  will  have  to 
be  subjected  to  a  searching  inquiry,  and  possibly 
be  found  baseless  after  all. 

Scientific  hypotheses  do  not  pretend  to  do  more 
than  explain  all  those  phenomena  which  are  known 
at  the  time  of  their  formation  :  they  supply  the 
mind  with  a  clue  for  further  researches ;  they 
serve  to  connect  the  isolated  facts,  and  to  sim- 
plify the  bewildering  maze  in  which  we  find  our- 
selves ;  and  however  erroneous  they  may  event- 
ually turn  out  to  be,  they  will  yet  be  of  use,  like 


RELATION  TO  THE  OTHER  SCIENCES.  7 

will-o'-the-wisps,  in  warning  future  students  from 
what  has  been  proved  to  be  wrong.  But  they  can 
do  no  more  than  this ;  with  the  accession  of 
further  facts  and  the  enlargement  of  the  boun- 
daries of  the  science,  they  have  to  be  continually 
modified,  and  often  to  be  given  up  altogether. 
A  science  consists  of  hypotheses  more  or  less 
nearly  related ;  and  its  aim  is  to  make  these 
hypotheses  correspond  more  and  more  closely  with 
the  observed  facts.  It  is  evident,  therefore,  that 
while  a  science  cannot  progress  without  the  forma- 
tion and  testing  of  hypotheses,  a  young  science, 
like  that  of  Philology,  will  put  forward  many 
which  maturer  knowledge  will  show  to  be  un- 
tenable. 

Now,  it  is  necessary  to  bear  in  mind  what  is 
meant  by  science  and  scientific  knowledge.  Scien- 
tific differs  from  the  ordinary  knowledge  of  prac- 
tical life  in  being  comparative.  In  order  to  know 
an  object  or  be  conscious  of  a  sensation,  we  have 
to  compare  and  contrast  it  with  some  other  object 
or  sensation.  The  more  accurately  this  act  of 
comparison  is  performed,  the  more  nearly  shall  we 
approach  to  scientific  certainty.  For  this  purpose 
a  standard  of  comparison  is  required,  some  third 
term  with  which  we  majr  compare  our  two  other 
terms.  In  other  words,  to  use  Mr  Herbert  Spen- 
cer's language,  the  distinction  between  scientific 


8  SPHERE  OF  COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY. 

and  unscientific  knowledge  is,  that  the  one  is 
quantitative,  the  other  qualitative.  The  primitive 
savage  knew  the  qualitative  difference  between  hot 
and  cold  water ;  his  senses  told  him  that  much  : 
a  scientific  knowledge  of  the  matter  began  with 
the  thermometer,  which  enables  us  to  measure  the 
amount  of  heat  in  each  case. 

It  is  easy  enough,  then,  to  see  wherein  a  scien- 
tific treatment  of  language  differs  from  that  hap- 
hazard charlatanry  at  which  Voltaire  directed  one 
of  his  epigrams.  Language  is  the  expression  of 
thought  and  feeling  through  mechanical  means  ; 
and  just  as  it  has  been  found  possible  to  construct 
a  science  of  thought  and  feeling,  so  with  greater 
reason  should  we  expect  to  discover  law  and  order 
when  that  thought  and  feeling  has  been  subjected 
to  the  restraints  of  physiological  conditions,  and 
expressed  in  articulate  speech.  Every  sound 
emitted  by  the  human  voice  is  the  result  of  the 
physical  formation  of  the  vocal  organs,  and  of  the 
manner  in  which  these  are  brought  into  contact 
with  the  breath  ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
laws  which  govern  the  development  of  the  human 
mind  will  necessitate  the  expression  of  thought 
and  its  relations  in  a  particular  way.  Language  is 
limited  as  much  on  the  psychological  as  upon  the 
physiological  side  :  a  knowledge  of  this  twofold 
limitation  will  constitute  its  science.     And  inas- 


RELATION  TO  THE  OTHER  SCIENCES.  9 

much  as  the  two  sides  can  be  as  little  separated 
from  one  another  in  actual  speech  as  oxygen  and 
hydrogen  in  water,  or  colour  from  the  objects  about 
us,  the  general  laws  of  the  science  must  relate  to 
the  combination,  although,  for  analytical  purposes, 
it  may  be  advisable  to  investigate  the  two  separ- 
ately. But  we  must  never  forget  that  such  a 
separate  investigation  is  preliminary  only.  Neither 
linguistic  metaphysics  nor  phonology  by  them- 
selves represent  philology,  but  a  combination  of 
both.  We  may  have  laws  of  phonology  like  that 
of  Grimm,  or  laws  of  linguistic  metaphysics,  such 
as  that  every  predicate  must  have  a  subject.  But 
these  are  only  empirical,  subordinate,  and  partial, 
forming  the  scaffolding  of  the  higher  and  more 
comprehensive  generalisations  of  the  master-science 
itself.  This,  however,  is  a  truth  often  forgotten, 
and  more  will  be  said  about  it  further  on. 

Now,  in  being  scientific,  Philology  must  be 
comparative ;  and  it  is  simply  the  application  of 
the  comparative  method  to  the  phenomena  of 
language  that  has  brought  the  new  science  into 
being.  The  attempt  to  study  a  language  without 
reference  to  any  other  is  futile.  A  certain  number 
of  empirical  rules  may  indeed  be  found  peculiar  to 
the  language  in  question,  but  the  reasons  of  the 
existence  of  these,  and  the  more  important  and 
general  laws  to  which  the  language  conforms,  can 


10  SPHERE  OF  COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY. 

only  be  discovered  by  a  methodical  comparison 
with  other  dialects,  while  many  of  the  fancied 
facts  of  "  scholarship  "  will  turn  out  to  be  the 
most  portentous  errors.  Hence  originated  such 
beliefs  as  the  derivation  of  Latin  from  the  iEolic 
dialect,  the  misconception  of  the  locative  case, 
the  idea  of  the  priority  of  the  passive  to  the  middle 
voice  in  Greek,  the  identity  of  /caXe'co  and  "  call," 
o\o$  and  "  whole,"  or  the  grotesquely  wrong 
meanings  assigned  to  such  Homeric  words  as  S^epo? 
and   /jLepoires,1  not  to   speak  of  Buttmann's  endea- 

1  The  old  grammarians  connected  the  Homeric  diepbs  with  StcuVw, 
and  so  identified  it  with  the  post-Homeric  diepbs,  "  wet."  Accord- 
ingly, diepbs  (3poros  (Od.  6,  201)  was  explained  to  mean  "  a  mortal  filled 
with  the  juices  of  life,"  and  diepid  nodi  (Od.  9,  43),  "  with  juicy," 
i.e.,  "quick  foot!"  ~Mepo\J/  was  derived  from  pieipopicu  (or  rather 
piepLfa)  and  8\f>  in  the  sense  of  "dividing  the  voice,"  i.e.,  "articu- 
late," in  disregard  of  the  fact  that  /xipos  and  p.epifa  do  not  occur 
in  Homer,  the  allied  /xopos,  pioTpa,  and  efyiaprcu  only  implyiftg 
"apportionment,"  not  "division"  (Curtius,  Grundzuge  d.  Griech. 
Etymol.,  p.  104).  Aiepbs  really  comes  from  the  same  root  as  5iu>, 
Bivos,  Sansk.  clt,  "  to  hasten,"  whence  by  an  easy  transition  of  mean- 
ing we  get  also  deivbs,  oeos,  deidu,  and  dirus  ;  while  piepoires  must  be 
"  the  snatchers,"  connected  with  p.dpTTTU),  like  arepoTrrj  and  crrepoi}/ 
with  d-arpdirTO}  (Fick  in  Kuhn's  "  Zeitschrift  fur  vergleichende 
Sprachforschung,"  xx.  3,  1871).  Confinement  to  the  resources  of 
a  single  language  not  only  brought  about  such  absurd  etymologies 
as  abound  in  Plato's  "  Kratylus,"  but  sometimes  resulted  in  the 
invention  of  a  purely  imaginary  word.  Thus  the  Scholiasts,  after 
exhausting  all  possible  references  to  rplros,  to  the  Libyan  lake 
Tritonis,  or  to  the  Boeotian  torrent  Triton  in  rpiroyeveia,  the 
Homeric  epithet  of  Athena,  coined  in  their  despair  a  word,  rpiru), 
which  was  put  down  as  an  iEolic  term  for  "  the  head "  (Schol. 
Aristoph.  Nub.  9S9,  Tzetz.  Lycophr.  519).  The  origin  of  Trlto- 
(jiiuia,  however,  does  not  seem  far  to  seek.     I  would  connect  it 


EELATION  TO  THE  OTHER  SCIENCES.  11 

vour  to  get  a(f>vo<;  out  of  a^Oovos.1  Until  a  common 
quantitative  standard  was  applied,  until  it  was 
recognised  that  language,  like  everything  else  in 
this  world,  obeys  undeviating  laws  of  its  own, 
excessively  complicated  though  these  may  be, 
such  mistakes  were  inevitable.  As  in  other 
things,  so  in  language.  We  cannot  really  under- 
stand a  single  dialect  unless  we  study  it  in  the 
light  of  others.  For  literary  and  artistic  purposes 
this  may  not  be  necessary,  but  then  we  must  not 
confound  such  a  study  with  philological  know- 
ledge, and  believe  that  we  know  a  language  be- 
cause we  can  successfully  imitate  the  idiosyncrasies 
of  a  few  of  its  literary  men.2 

with  the  Vedic  deity  Trita,  who  is  said  to  have  harnessed  the  sun- 
horse  (see  Rig-V.  i.  163,  2,  3).  Now  Trita  has  long  ago  been 
shown  by  Burnouf  to  be  the  Thraetaona,  son  of  Athwya,  of  the 
Avesta,  who  finally  became  transformed  into  the  Feridun  of 
Firdusi,  the  slayer  of  Zohak,  or  Aji  dahdka,  "the  biting  snake" 
of  night  and  darkness.  "  Trita-born  "  would  be  a  fitting  title  for 
Athena,  the  dawn-goddess. 

1  'A<£pos  or  a<pevos  is  akin  to  the  Sansk.  ap-nas,  "possession," 
Lat.  ops,  op-es,  op-ulentus,  in-ops,  and  copia  (=  co-op-i-a). 

2  Dr  Wagner,  in  the  President's  Annual  Address  to  the  London 
Philological  Society  for  1873  (p.  33),  says  (speaking  of  German 
scholars),  "  We  have  passed  the  stage  of  a  seutimental  admiration 
of  the  ancient  authors,  such  as  we  find  it  in  the  editions  of  Heyne 
and  his  school.  Our  eyes  are  fully  open  to  the  shortcomings  and 
failings  of  Latin  literature  when  considered  aesthetically,  nor  do 
we  any  longer  attribute  to  this  literature  the  '  humanising '  in- 
fluence so  naively  believed  in  by  former  centuries.  There  is  among 
us  very  little  of  that  which  may  be  termed  elegant  scholarship — 
which  is  all  very  nice,  but  perfectly  useless  ;  in  fact,  we  do  not  work 


12  SPHERE  OF  COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY. 

In  calling  Comparative  Philology  a  science,  we 
must  not,  of  course,  think  of  it  as  an  exact  science 
like  astronomy.  Here  the  phenomena  are  com- 
paratively but  little  complicated,  and  have  been 
studied  for  a  considerable  number  of  years.  The 
generalisations  obtained  from  them  by  a  compari- 
son of  instances  have  been  so  far  simplified  as  to 
be  resolved  into  the  one  primary  law  of  gravitation, 
which  serves  as  the  starting-point  of  deductively 
determining  the  relations  of  new  astronomical 
phenomena.  Other  sciences  have  not  yet  reached 
this  exactness ;  chemistry  seems  likely  soon  to 
find  its  primary  law,  but  meteorology,  sociology, 
and  many  more  in  which  the  phenomena  are  ex- 
tremely complex,  are  very  far  indeed  from  such 
perfection.  Here  we  can  only  collect,  compare, 
and  classify,  thankful  if  we  can  bring  the  isolated 
phenomena  under  some  general  heads  which  may 
bear  more  or  less  relation  to  one  another.  The 
process  is  strictly  inductive  ;  we  assume  the  uni- 
formity of  nature,  and  generalise  from  the  facts  in 

like  ladies,  but  like  men  mindful  of  a  serious  purpose,  which  is,  iu 
the  first  line,  to  trace  the  intellectual  life  of  the  great  Roman  nation 
in  its  literature  ;  and  secondly,  to  show  and  follow  the  connecting 
links  between  this  literature  and  the  other  nations  of  Europe  and 
Asia.  To  attain  this  end,  it  is  necessary  to  pursue  the  most  minute 
investigations,  but  not  to  generalise  without  sufficient  data  and 
foundations.  But  the  days  in  which  it  was  held  the  height  of 
Latin  scholarship  to  write  a  splendid  Ciceronian  style,  and  to  turn 
neat  Latin  verses,  are  past,  and  will  never  return." 


EELATION  TO  THE  OTHER  SCIENCES.       13 

accordance  with  what  we  see  at  present  going  on 
around  us,  testing  these  generalisations  by  fresh 
instances  and  combination  of  instances.  Thus  in 
Philology  the  facts  with  which  we  have  to  deal 
are  thoughts  expressed  in  speech.  So  far  as  these 
will  carry  us,  we  can  proceed  with  our  generalisa- 
tions. We  assume  that  the  same  mental  processes 
were  involved  in  the  first  attempts  at  language 
that  are  involved  now,  and  that,  given  a  certain 
arrangement  of  the  vocal  organs,  the  same  sound 
will  always  have  been  produced.  In  other  words, 
we  assume  the  uniformity  of  nature  in  regard  to 
language.  With  this  assumption  we  proceed  to 
our  comparisons,  classifying  the  like  together  and 
separating  the  unlike.  It  is  the  object  of  the 
science  to  discover  the  limits  of  this  classification, 
and  to  create  an  ideal  type,  as  in  natural  history, 
around  which  we  may  group  the  several  phenomena 
which  resemble  one  another.  Thus  we  put  the 
so-called  Indo-European  languages  into  a  class 
apart  by  referring  them  to  a  hypothetical  Aryan 
parent-speech ;  and  we  throw  together  a  number 
of  derivatives,  or  a  series  of  ideas,  by  assuming  a 
common  root  or  a  common  primary  notion.  In 
this  way  we  come  to  know  the  typical  marks  by 
which  similar  instances  may  be  recognised.  The 
analogy  of  the  other  sciences  would  lead  us  to 
infer  that  these  typical  marks  are  by  no  means 


14  SPHERE  OF  COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY. 

those  which  first  meet  the  superficial  view ;  and, 
in  fact,  one  of  the  first  results  of  Comparative 
Philology  was  to  lay  down  that  mere  similarity  of 
sound  could  constitute  no  basis  for  a  sound  com- 
parison. Language  is  not  phonology  only  ;  if  we 
would  seek  the  true  marks  of  difference  and  re- 
semblance, we  must  penetrate  below  the  surface, 
and  find  some  surer  guide  to  our  first  attempts  at 
grouping  than  the  shifting  modifications  of  sound. 
Speech  is  uttered  thought ;  grammar  and  structure 
therefore  must  lead  the  way  to  the  examination  of 
the  lexicon.  When  we  have  formed  our  groups 
by  comparing  the  grammatical  characteristics  of 
the  languages  under  review,  we  may  complete  the 
process  by  comparing  the  vocabularies,  knowing 
the  limits  within  which  the  resemblance  of  letters 
is  due  to  identity  of  origin,  and  not  to  accident. 
The  groups  thus  formed  will  then  have  to  be  com- 
pared with  one  another,  and  the  general  laws  of 
the  science  determined  thereby.  It  is  evident 
that  such  a  comparison  must  be  as  wide  as  possible  ; 
the  greater  the  number  of  facts  brought  together, 
the  more  diversified  in  time,  and  space,  and  cir- 
cumstances the  languages  compared,  the  safer  and 
more  general  will  our  conclusions  be.  To  confine 
our  attention  to  a  single  family  of  speech,  much 
more  to  two  or  three  members  of  the  family,  will 
load  us  into  many  errors  and  false  generalisations. 


RELATION  TO  THE  OTHER  SCIENCES.       15 

No  idiom,  however  obscure  and  barbarous,  can  be 
despised  by  the  comparative  student.  The  most 
precious  facts  of  the  science  will  often  lie  in  dia- 
lects whose  very  names  are  almost  unknown,  and 
whose  speakers  stand  upon  the  lowest  level  of 
humanity.  It  is  in  these,  however,  and  not  in 
the  polished  periods  of  a  classical  literature,  that 
we  can  trace  the  fundamental  laws  and  working  of 
primitive  speech,  and  detect  those  simple  contri- 
vances which  have  elsewhere  been  obliterated. 
Science  desires  truth,  not  beautv,  although  in  the 
end  the  true  is  always  the  beautiful. 

The  laws  or  generalisations  which  we  are  called 
upon  to  observe  are  of  two  kinds — empirical  and 
ultimate  or  primary.  So  long  as  we  confine  our 
attention  to  one  part  only  of  the  subject,  we  meet 
with  a  number  of  rules  which  are  always  complied 
with,  though  we  cannot  account  for  their  exist- 
ence. Thus  we  find  that  a  Gothic  g  almost  inva- 
riably answers  to  a  Greek  ^,  a  Latin  h  or  ft  a 
Sanskrit  gk,  and  a  Slavonic  g  or  z ;  but  why 
this  should  be  we  cannot  at  present  tell.1  We 
only  know  that  such  is  the  case ;  it  is  an  empiri- 
cal law,  the  immediate  result  of  observation,  which 

1  These  phonetic  changes  have,  it  is  true,  been  brought  about 
dv  the  influence  of  climate,  food,  laziness  or  the  reverse,  analogy, 
and  fashion  ;  but  we  are  still  ignorant  of  the  relative  power  of 
these  causes,  and  the  precise  manner  in  which  they  affect  the 
phonology  of  a  language. 


16  SPHERE  OF  COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY. 

will  have  to  be  explained  by  some  higher  and  more 
comprehensive  law.     These  subordinate  laws  have 
to  be  made  out  before  the  primary  can  be  deduced 
from  them  by  comparison ;    but  the  primary  laws 
alone  belong  to  Comparative   Philology   properly 
so  called,   the  subordinate   ones   relating  to  the 
preliminary  subdivisions    of  the  science,  such  as 
Phonology.     But  the  action  of  both  kinds  of  law 
alike  is  affected  by  two  great  principles  or  causes 
of  change  in  language.     These   cannot  be  called 
laws  themselves,  since  they  do  not  act  in  an  in- 
variable   manner ;    but   they  make    a   science  of 
language   possible,   by   preventing  it  from  being 
stationar}r,  and  by  bringing  about  that    constant 
movement    and    development    in    speech    which 
allows  the  action  of  the  several  laws  to  take  place. 
These  two  principles  may  be  named  Laziness  and 
Emphasis.      The  first    of  these    has   been  made 
familiar  to  every  one  by  Professor   Max   Miiller 
under    the    name    of    Phonetic     Decay.      Words 
become   clipped   and  shortened  in  the    course  of 
time,  until  it  may  happen  that  nothing  is  left  of 
the   original,   some    secondary  termination    alone 
remaining.     Thus  the  Latin  pihcs  has  passed  the 
various  stages  of  the  Spanish  peluca,  the  Italian 
perruca,  the    French  pemique,  and    the  English 
perwiche,  periwig,  into   the   modern  wig.     Rapid 
speaking,  an  imperfect  ear  or  pronunciation,  and 


RELATION  TO  THE  OTHER  SCIENCES.       17 

the  common  desire  to  save  time  and  trouble,  will 
inevitably  wear  away  the  words  of  everyday  life. 
Where  little  care  is  taken  of  language,  where 
there  is  no  literature,  and  no  standard  or  court 
dialect,  the  vocabulary  will  be  like  the  drift 
boulders  that  line  our  valleys,  or  the  sand  and 
gravel  of  ancient  beaches.  The  lower  we  descend 
in  the  scale  of  culture,  the  more  rapid  and  exten- 
sive will  be  the  process  of  decay.  The  Berlin 
workman  has  contracted  ich  into  i,  like  our  own 
countrymen;  and  the  waggoner's  wo!  and  way! 
are  the  last  relics  of  withhold  and  withstay.  In 
spite  of  artificial  attempts  to  preserve  the  full 
forms  of  the  words,  and  the  adoption  of  Greek 
metres  by  a  literary  coterie,  the  curt  colloquial- 
isms of  the  plays  of  Plautus  and  Terence,  or  the 
cauneas  with  which  the  contemporaries  of  Cicero  1 
scandalised  the  purist,  became  the  models  after 
which  the  Romance  languages  shaped  themselves.2 
It  may  not  be  a  distant  period  at  which  the  don't, 
the  Til  and  the  isnt  of  conversation  take  their 

1  Cic.  de  Div.,  ii.  40,  84  :  "  Quum  ML  Crassus  exercitum  Brun- 
disii  imponeret  quidam  in  portu,  caricas  Caimo  advectas  vendens, 
Cauneas  clamitabat.  Dicamus,  si  placet,  monitum  ab  eo  Crassum, 
caver et  ne  iret." 

-  Thus,  in  Heaut.  v.  5,  16,  scansion  requires  us  to  pronounce, 
"  Gnate  ln'yo  pol  ti  do  pollam  lepidatn  quam  tu  fail  ames  ; "  and 
in  Adelphi,  iii.  2,  20,  "  Ad'lescent'  ips'  erip'r'  ceilos  :  posthac  prse- 
cip'tem  darem,"  where  we  are  reminded  of  the  French  ceil.  (See 
Donaldson,  "  Varronianus,"  pp.  524-527). 

B 


18  SPHERE  OF  COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY. 

authorised  place  in  books ;  and  if  ainH  is  never 
able  to  lose  its  taint  of  vulgarity,  it  will  be  due 
to  the  printing-press  and  the  schoolmaster.  Chil- 
dren are  the  best  representatives  that  we  have  of 
the  infantile  and  barbarous  state  of  society,  and 
the  language  of  childhood  is  one  of  maimed  and 
half-pronounced  words.  Such  nursery  names  as 
Tom,  Harry,  Bob,  Peggy,  have  become  so  many 
household  terms.  But  phonetic  decay  is  especially 
accelerated  by  the  contact  of  two  languages.  The 
attempt  to  speak  a  foreign  idiom  leads  to  the  rejec- 
tion of  all  difficult  sounds.  Thus  the  final  guttural 
in  our  enough,  through,  though,  has  been  softened 
and  lost;  and  languages  such  as  the  Hawaian,  which 
do  not  suffer  two  consonants  to  follow  one  another, 
turn  words  like  "  steel "  into  kila  (for  tila).  In- 
deed, contraction  and  decay  may  be  carried  so  far  as 
to  become  an  idiosyncrasy  of  a  particular  language. 
This  is  pre-eminently  the  case  in  French,  which 
persistently  modifies  the  pronunciation  of  every 
foreign  word  which  it  has  to  adopt,  in  accordance 
with  its  principle  of  rejecting  the  final  letters. 
Thus  London  must  be  Londres,  and  Biarritz 
Biarri',  in  spite  of  local  usage.  The  terminal  con- 
sonants have  been  lost  in  the  majority  of  words, 
and  the  rest  of  the  vocabulary  has  had  to  follow 
the  general  fashion.1     Analogy  has  immense  power 

1  The   Chinese  similarly  reduce  foreign  words  to  one  syllable 


RELATION  TO  THE  OTHER  SCIENCES.  19 

in  language,  and  whatever  once  becomes  a  distin- 
guishing feature  of  a  dialect  forms  a  type  after 
which  every  exception  is  gradually  forced  to  model 
itself.1  As  poetry  is  better  remembered  than 
prose,  so  the  rhythm  of  analogy  fixes  itself  upon 
the  memory,  and  the  ear  and  will,  once  accus- 
tomed to  a  particular  association  of  sound  and 
idea,  instinctively  demand  the  sound  when  the 
idea  has  to  be  expressed.  Irregularities  con- 
stantly tend  to  disappear,  more  especially  if  no 
artificial  means  are  employed  to  perpetuate  them. 
The  JEolic  dialect  assimilated  the  accentuation  of 
every  word  to  the  general  rule  which  threw  the 
accent  back  upon  the  antepenultima ;  our  own 
tongue  is  replacing  the  strong  preterites  of  our 
verbs  by  the  secondary  perfect  in  -eel,  originally 
elide  (did),  the  reduplicated  past  tense  of  do ;  and 
an  English  child  whom  I  knew,  born  and  brought 
np  in  France,  and  speaking  French  only,  conju- 
gated all  the  verbs  regularly,  saying,  for  instance, 
avrai  for  aural,  and  allercd  for  irai.     In  fact,  we 

•when  they  have  to  repeat  them.  The  Pigeon-English  of  Canton 
offers  numerous  examples  of  this  ;  and  the  Chinese  at  San  Fran- 
cisco, I  am  told,  invariably  say,  "fcMorn'  Mis'  Stan',"  instead  of 
'"Morning,  Mr  Stanford." 

1  M.  Ancessi  ("  h'S  causatif  et  le  theme  iV  dans  les  langues  de 
Sem  et  de  Cham,"  p.  72)  asks  why  French  for  some  time  past 
classes  all  its  new  verbs,  however  derived,  and  of  whatever  meaning, 
under  the  first  conjugation.  No  one  "  would  dare  to  pronounce 
electrisoir,  cldoroformir,  photogravure"     See  Chapter  IX. 


20  SPHERE  OF  COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY. 

may  lay  it  down  as  an  universal  rule  that  the 
oldest  grammatical  forms  are  those  which  are 
rarest  in  a  language ;  so  that  when  we  find  in 
Sanskrit  only  a  very  small  number  of  verbal  roots, 
such  as  as-mi,  ad-mi,  which  affix  the  pronoun  with- 
out any  intervening  element,  we  may  regard  them 
as  going  back  to  the  most  ancient  period  of  the 
speech.  The  influence  of  analogy  had  been  con- 
tinually narrowing  the  province  of  the  formation, 
until  only  those  verbs  which  constituted  the  most 
necessary  stock-in-trade  of  everyday  life  were  able 
to  resist  the  encroachments  of  other  later  but 
more  popular  forms.  If,  however,  we  really  want 
to  see  the  principle  of  Phonetic  Decay  in  its  full 
activity  and  importance,  we  must  turn  our  eyes  to 
unwritten  dialects  rather  than  to  that  particular  dia- 
lect which  has  accidentally  been  stereotyped  into  the 
standard  language  of  literature.  Here  the  various 
processes  which  change  and  develope  language  go 
on  unchecked ;  and  unless  we  can  compare  dialect 
with  dialect,  it  is  often  obviously  impossible  to 
settle  the  original  form,  and  therefore  the  true 
etymology,  of  some  word  in  the  special  idiom  we 
are  examining.  The  wear  and  tear  of  time  alters 
so  completely  the  face  of  words,  that  where  we  are 
not  able  to  apply  the  scientific  method  of  com- 
parison by  the  help  of  cognate  dialects,  our 
attempt  at  derivation  is  likely  to  be  nothing  more 


RELATION  TO  THE  OTHER  SCIENCES.  21 

than  an  unscientific  guess.  It  is  this  want  of 
allied  dialects  that  makes  Latin  etymology  a 
matter  of  such  difficulty  and  uncertainty  ;  and  we 
have  to  he  thankful  for  the  fragments  of  Oscan, 
Umbrian,  and  Sabellian  which  we  can  recover 
from  a  few  inscriptions  or  the  scanty  notices  of 
grammarians.  When  we  remember  that  it  is  only 
our  extensive  knowledge  of  the  languages  which 
are,  as  it  were,  the  daughters  of  Latin  that  enables 
us  to  trace  such  a  word  as  the  French  meme,  for 
instance,  through  the  Portuguese  ??ies?no,  the  Old 
French  meisme,  the  Provencal  ??iedesme,  and  the 
Old  Provencal  smetessme,  to  the  Latin  semetipsis- 
simum,  we  may  well  despair  of  making  out  the 
true  ancestry  of  words  when  such  an  assistance  is 
not  available.  Even  the  Turanian  or  Ugro-Altaic 
lan^uao'es,1    which    do   not    so    readilv   admit   of 

1  The  term  Turanian  must  be  confined  to  those  Ugro-Altaic  lan- 
guages which,  as  it  seems  to  me,  have  been  proved  by  Schott  and 
others  to  be  related  to  one  another  (extending  from  Finland  on 
the  one  side  to  Manchuria  on  the  other).  Under  the  Ugrian 
dialects  are  classed  Finnish,  Lapp,  Mordvinian,  Tcheremissian, 
Votiak,  Zyrianian,  Vogulian,  &e.  ;  while  the  Altaic  comprise  the 
three  great  sub-classes  of  Turkish- Tatar,  Mongolian,  and  Tungu- 
sian.  The  Samoiedian  idioms  stand  midway  between  the  Ugric 
and  the  Altaic.  With  this  family  I  believe  that  Basque  must  also 
be  grouped.  Prince  Lucien  Bonaparte,  Charencey,  and  others  have 
shown  that  this  interesting  language  closely  agrees  with  Ugric  in 
grammar,  structure,  numerals,  and  pronouns.  Indeed,  the  more  I 
examine  the  question,  the  nearer  does  the  relationship  appear  to 
be,  more  especially  when  the  newly-revealed  Accadian  language  of 
ancient  Babylonia,  by  far  the  oldest  specimen  of   the  Turanian 


22  SPHERE  OF  COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY. 

phonetic  decay  as  the  inflectional  families  of 
speech,  are  kept  living  by  the  same  active  prin- 
ciple, and  without  dialectic  comparison  we  should 
be  altogether  unable  to  penetrate  their  secrets.  It 
is  thus  that  we  can  analyse  the  verbal  forms  in 
Magyar,  Mordvinian,  and  Vogul,  which  incorpo- 
rate the  objective  pronouns,  or  trace  the  original 
forms  of  the  Turanian  numerals ;  and  if  Basque  is 
to  be  added  to  the  group,  the  importance  of  an 
acquaintance  with  a  variety  of  dialects  becomes 
still  more  manifest.  The  Basque  verb  presents 
the  phenomenon  of  incorporation  to  an  astonish- 
ing degree  ;  not  only  the  objective  cases  of  the 
pronouns,  but  the  datives  and  the  index  of  the 
plural  as  well,  are  inserted  into  the  body  of  the 
word,  and  the  whole  has  been  fused  together  by 
the  influence  of  phonetic  decay  into  a  hardly  dis- 
tinguishable unity.  A  comparison  of  the  several 
Basque  dialects — Labourdin,  Souletin,  High  and 
Low  Navarrese,  Guipuscoan,  and  Biscayan — is 
equally  indispensable  for  the  vocabulary.  Basque 
has  existed  for  centuries  as  an  unwritten  language, 
separated  from  the  rest  of  its  kindred,  and  strug- 
gling for  existence  in  a  small  tract  of  country.     If 

family  that  we  possess,  is  brought  into  use  for  the  purpose  of  com- 
parison. M.  Autoine  d'Abbadie,  in  d'Abbadie  &  Chaho's  "  Etudes 
Crammaticales  sur  la  Langue  euskarienne  "  (pp.  17,  1S\  has  pointed 
out  as  far  back  as  1836  the  resemblances  that  exist  between  Basque 
on  the  one  hand,  and  Magyar  and  Lapp  on  the  other. 


RELATION  TO  THE  OTHER  SCIENCES.  23 

we  are  to  discover  the  affinities  of  its  lexicon,  it 
must  be  by  knowing  what  were  the  primitive  forms 
of  its  words.  The  larger  part  of  the  dictionary  is, 
indeed,  derived  from  Spanish  or  French ;  but 
when  we  find  that  the  natives  of  S.  Jean  de  Luz1 
ordinarily  drop  r  and  d  between  vowels,  without 
even  the  substitution  of  the  aspirate,  thu3  making 
harits  (oak)  halts,2  aditu  (heard)  a'itu,  baduzu 
(have  you)  bauzu,  emadazu  (give  me)  emazu,  we 
may  well  be  cautious  even  when  we  are  dealing 
with  a  member  of  the  agglutinative  family  of 
speech. 

Of   course,    phonetic   decay  attacks  principally 
those  portions  of  a  word  or  sentence  upon  which 

1  That  is,  the  Labourdin  dialect. 

2  The  aspirate  is  frequently  lost,  and  we  have  aits  for  haits,  and 
iri  (town)  for  hiri.  H  often  stands  for  g  (as  in  bihar,  "to- 
morrow ; "  ihes,  "  flight "),  and  Tc  (according  to  Prince  Lucien  Bona- 
parte and  M.  Vinson),  especially  at  the  beginning  of  a  word  {e.g., 
hill,  "to  die;"  hume,  "child,"  in  arhume,  "lamb,"  ema-kume, 
"woman"),  often  also  for  n  between  two  vowels  (thus  liho  = 
" linum,"  ohore=" honorem,"  dim  (for  diliaru)  =  " denarium ").  It 
is  possible  that  harits  may  be  a  loan-word,  since  a  dialectic  varia- 
tion gives  us  aretcha  ;  and  so  the  word  might  be  traced  back  to  the 
Latin  quercus.  (See  Vinson,  Revue  de  Linguistique,  v.  1872.)  Van 
Eys,  however  ("  Dictionnaire  Basque-Francais,"  pp.  viii. -xi.)  dis- 
putes the  priority  of  the  guttural  to  the  aspirate,  and  though  the 
change  of  h  into  g  or  k  is  contrary  to  the  usual  phonetic  law  in 
language  that  the  harder  sound  passes  into  the  easier,  and  not  the 
easier  into  the  harder,  the  arguments  of  so  profound  a  Basque 
scholar  require  a  careful  examination. 


24  SPHERE  OF  COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY. 

no  emphasis  falls.1  The  accented  syllable  remains 
untouched,  and  when  this  is  a  secondary  deriva- 
tive, and  not  part  of  the  root,  sometimes  causes 
the  entire  loss  of  the  root  itself,  as  in  age  from 
cetaticum,  where  the  first  letter  only  claims  con- 
nection with  cevum,  alwv  (Etruscan  aiv-il),  our 
ever,  Sansk.  dyns  "life."2  In  a  case  of  this 
kind  we  have  another  principle  besides  laziness 
brought  into  play.  It  is  the  striving  after 
clearness  and  distinctness,  the  second  cause  of 
change  in  language,  which  I  have  called  the  prin- 
ciple of  Emphasis.  It  works  in  the  contrary 
direction  to  Phonetic  Decay,  and,  as  it  were,  coun- 
terbalances the  latter.  The  use  of  language  is  to 
make  ourselves  intelligible  to  others ;  and  the 
more  intelligible  we  wish  to  be,  the  more  careful 
we  are  in  our  pronunciation,  and  the  greater  stress 
we  lay  upon  those  words  or  syllables  to  which  we 
would  particularly  direct  the  attention.  If  we  find 
that  a  foreigner  does  not  understand  us,  we  in- 
stinctively raise  the  voice  and  speak  with  slow- 
ness and  precision.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that 
the  principle  of  Emphasis  loses  in  force  with  the 

1  The  general  rule  may  thus  be  laid  down,  that  the  accented 
syllable  is  never  lost  ;  and,  consequently,  derivations  like  that  of 
tinier  (disncr),  dine,  from  desinere,  have  to  be  rejected. 

2  Max  Miiller,  "Lectures  on  the  Science  of  Language,"  i.  304. 


RELATION  TO  THE  OTHER  SCIENCES.  25 

progress  of  culture  and  intelligence.  Education 
makes  us  readier  in  catching  the  meaning  of  those 
with  whom  we  are  conversing,  and  our  mastery 
over  ideas  gives  us  the  clue  to  many  of  which  only 
a  fragment,  only  a  suggestion,  has  reached  the 
ear.1  The  modern  Englishman  of  the  upper 
classes,  particularly  if  he  belong  to  the  south  of 
the  island,  is  notorious  for  closing  his  lips  and 
lazy  indistinctness  of  speech.  It  is  quite  other- 
wise with  savage  races.  They  lack  that  quickness 
in  seizing  the  signification  of  what  is  set  before 
them  which  is  characteristic  of  the  civilised  man, 
even  though  they  do  not  display  that  hopeless 
bewilderment  which  Mr  Galton's  African  Dam- 
maras  showed  when  required  to  count  beyond 
three.2  The  meaning  of  their  words  has  to  be 
eked  out  by  gesture  and  gesticulation,  and  the 
muscular  effort  called  forth  by  these  necessarily 
extends  to  the  elocution  also.      If  we  would  speak 

1  This  principle  of  Emphasis  lies  at  the  root  of  that  repetition 
of  the  negative  which  is  so  striking  in  Greek.  Vulgar  English 
emphasises  and  strengthens  a  negation  in  the  same  natural  way, 
and  it  is  only  the  growth  of  culture  that  has  made  two  negatives 
express  an  affirmative  instead  of  a  stronger  negative.  This  intel- 
lectual laziness  and  economy,  the  syntactical  analogue  of  phonetic 
decay,  has  proceeded  to  its  most  extreme  point  in  cases  like  the 
French  pas,  point,  jamais,  where  the  negative  is  dropped  altogether, 
and  has  to  be  supplied  by  the  mind. 

2  See  Sir  J.  Lubbock's  "  Origin  of  Civilisation  and  Primitive  Con- 
dition of  Man," pp.  333-336,  and  Galton's  "Tropical  South  Africa," 
p.  132. 


26  SPHERE  OF  COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY. 

clearly,  we  must   take  the   trouble  to   exert  our 
muscles  in  the  endeavour.1 

Now  the  principle  of  Emphasis  acts  upon  lan- 
guage in  many  ways.  First  of  all,  it  lies  at  the 
bottom  of  what  Professor  Max  Miiller  entitles 
Dialectic  Regeneration,  which  he  seems  to  set  up 
as  the  counterbalancing  principle  to  Phonetic  De- 
cay. The  words,  however,  and  still  more  rarely 
the  grammatical  forms,  which  from  time  to  time 
find  their  way  from  the  so-called  dialects  into  the 
literary  language,  are  too  few  and  unimportant  for 
the  process  to  be  raised  into  a  principle,  much  less 
a  principle  co-extensive  with  that  of  Laziness. 
We  want  one  which  is  the  same  in  kind ;  one, 
namely,  which  is  due  to  the  general  constitution 
of  our  nature.  Moreover,  Dialectic  Regeneration 
principally  applies  to  literary  languages  only,  not 
to  the  mass  of  human  speech.  And  even  in  these 
its  action  is  extremely  limited,  and,  unless  we  can 
find  the  motive  of  it,  at  once  accidental  and  capri- 
cious. The  motive,  however,  is  the  desire  to  give 
additional  strength  and  clearness ;  to  make  the 
language   employed  more   forcible,  and   therefore 

1  If.  Antoine  d'Abbadie  has  informed  me  of  a  curious  custom 
among  the  Gallas.  A  Galla  orator  marks  the  punctuation  of  his 
speech  by  lashing  a  leathern  whip  which  he  holds  in  his  hand. 
Thus  a  slight  stroke  denotes  a  comma,  a  harder  cut  a  semicolon, 
a  still  harder  one  a  full  stop,  while  a  note  of  admiration  is  repre- 
sented by  a  furious  cut  through  the  air. 


PELATION  TO  THE  OTHER  SCIENCES.  27 

more  distinct  and  plain.  A  new  word,  taken  up 
from  the  fresh  fountain  of  living  speech,  carries 
with  it  new  ideas,  and  impresses  itself  upon  the 
mind  more  vividly  than  the  familiar  expressions 
which  have  become  nothing  except  dead,  insipid 
symbols.  "We  read  of  the  "  four  points  of  the 
compass,"  with  a  full  understanding  of  what  is 
meant,  but  without  picturing  it  to  ourselves  in  any 
way;  but  when  Carlyle  talks  of  "  the  four  airts," 
at  once  our  attention  is  aroused,  and  our  imagina- 
tion engaged.  Our  mechanical  association  of 
sound  and  sense  can  alone  be  broken  through  by 
novelty,  and  the  excitement  of  realising  the  com- 
plete force  of  a  term  which  has  come  up  from  the 
patois  where  the  life  of  language  is  still  vigorous, 
and  words  have  not  become  mere  counters  and 
conventional  si°*ns.  Another  mode  of  arresting  our 
attention  and  giving  distinctness  to  the  thought 
which  has  to  be  expressed  is  by  setting  two  syno- 
nymes  side  by  side.  This  is  especially  frequent  in 
a  language  like  English,  the  vocabulary  of  which 
owes  as  much  to  Latin  as  to  Saxon  ;  and  much 
of  the  charm  of  the  authorised  version  of  the  Bible 
is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  translators  have  usually 
tried  to  bring  out  the  meaning  of  a  Greek  word 
by  using  two  English  equivalents,  one  from  a 
Romanic,  the  other  from  a  Teutonic  source.  In  this 
way  we  are  obliged  to  dwell  upon  the  conception 


28  SPHERE  OF  COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY. 

intended,  and  to  contrast  and  define  the  two  syno- 
nyines.  Somewhat  similar  is  the  origin  of  that 
analytical  tendency  which  distinguishes  our  modern 
European  languages.  The  difficulty  'of  mutual 
comprehension  on  the  part  of  the  Roman  provin- 
cials and  their  Teutonic  conquerors  necessitated 
the  distinct  expression  of  each  grammatical  shade 
of  meaning  by  a  separate  word.  The  old  broken- 
down  inflections  would  no  longer  suffice.  The 
idea  had  to  be  clearly  marked  out,  not  merely 
suggested,  for  a  people  whose  ear  and  mind  were 
unaccustomed  to  the  lansrua^e  with  which  thev 
came  in  contact.  Amabo  did  not  sufficiently  con- 
vey the  conception  of  futurity  to  the  Frank  :  the 
termination  allowed  him  neither  time  nor  oppor- 
tunity to  consider  what  it  intended  to  signify ;  and 
in  order  to  have  the  tense-distinction  clearly  pre- 
sented to  his  view,  it  was  necessary  to  go  back  to 
the  definite  representation  of  futurity — ama-fuo — 
out  of  which  amabo  had  grown,  and  analyse  the 
concept  into  aimer-ai,  "  I  have  to  love."  Even 
this  was  not  enough ;  the  personal  pronoun  had  to 
be  prefixed,  and  no  longer  implied  only  in  the 
form  ;  and  when  faimerai  itself  had  become  fami- 
liar and  conventional,  a  new  mode  of  expression,  in 
which  the  attention  might  be  fixed  upon  the  fact 
that  future  time  was  denoted,  had  to  be  invented 
in  je  vais  aimer.     The  influence  of  Emphasis  will 


RELATION  TO  THE  OTHER  SCIENCES.      29 

again  show  itself  not  only  in  the  preservation  of 
sounds  that  would  otherwise  be  subject  to  phonetic 
decay,  but  also  in  the  introduction  of  expletive 
ones.  The  insertion  of  the  dental  and  labial  in 
such  Greek  words  as  av-8-pbs  and  j^earj jjl- ft- p la  may 
indeed  be  ascribed  to  the  first  principle  rather  than 
to  the  second,  since  their  addition  facilitates  pro- 
nunciation ;  but  this  cannot  be  said  for  the  final  d 
in  our  own  sound,  lend  (A.-S.  Icenan),  riband  (Fr. 
ricban),  and  the  like.  The  same  letter  has  also 
crept  into  thunder  (A.-S.  thunor),  tender,  and 
jaundice  (Fr.  jaunisse).  The  effort  to  be  distinct 
has  again  produced  thumb  out  of  thum-a,  behest  out 
of  behces,  amongst  out  of  amonges,  tyrant  from  the 
Old  Fr.  tiran,  parchment  from  parchemin,  ancient 
from  ancien.  So,  too,  citizen  has  come  from 
citoyen,  though  this  may  have  been  due  to  an  or- 
thographic mistake.  Hardly  so,  however,  the 
inserted  letter  in  impregnable,  from  the  French 
impr  enable  ;  and  the  cases  of  an  intrusion  of  an  n 
or  r  into  the  middle  of  a  word  are  numerous. 
Thus  nightingale  represents  in  the  A.-S.  nihtegale, 
messenger,  passenger,  and  popinjay  are  the  Old 
Fr.  messagier,  passagier,  and  papigai ;  groom 
and  horse  are  the  A.-S.  guman  and  Ms,  cartridge 
is  the  Fr.  cartouche,  corporal  is  caporal,  culprit 
comes  from  culpa.  Similarly  n  has  been  added  in 
bittern,  A.-S.   butore,  and  marten,   A.-S.  mearth, 


30  SPHERE  OF  COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY. 

arid  the  Fr.  perdrix  (our  partridge)  goes  back  to 
the  Latin  perdix.1  The  same  principle  is  at  work, 
but  in  conjunction  with  phonetic  decay,  whenever 
the  loss  of  a  sound  is  compensated  by  the  length- 
ening of  the  adjoining  syllable,  as  in  mellis  for 
mehis  (stem  mad/iu?),  fiaXXov  for  paXyov,  or  feci 
for  fefeci.  But  the  principle  appears  by  itself  in 
lengthened  forms,  such  as  pavOavw,  Xafju^avw,  where 
the  secondary  inserted  syllable — av — arises  from 
the  wish  to  attach  greater  clearness  and  emphasis 
to  the  action  of  the  verb.  Much  the  same  account 
must  be  given  of  the  expletive  w  and  y,  which  like 
our  vulgar  hyind  for  kind,  or  the  Italian  luogka 
from  locus,  have  played  so  great  a  part  in  Greek 
grammar,  and  in  bringing  about  phonetic  changes. 
The  extension  of  moXi^  (Sansk.  purij  into  7ttoAx? 
and  of  7roXeyL6o?  into  irroXefio^  is  a  further  illustra- 
tion of  the  same  tendency.  But  perhaps  the  chief 
exhibition  of  the  power  of  Emphasis  is  to  be  found 
in  its  regulation  of  accent  and  intonation.  Vie 
naturally  accentuate  the  syllable  or  word  to  which 
we  would  give  prominence  and  definiteness  ;  and  the 
less  cultivated  the  language,  the  more  important  is 
the  employment  of  accent.  As  has  been  well  re- 
marked,2 accent  and  tone  vary  inversely  as  syntax  ; 


1  See  Morris,  "  Historical  Outlines  of  English  Accidence,"  pp. 
63-73. 

-  Rev.  J.  Earle  on  the  <:  Revision  of  the  English  Bible." 


RELATION  TO  THE  OTHER  SCIENCES.  31 

and  we  may  gauge  the  development  of  syntax  in  a 
language  by  its  use  or  disuse  of  accent.  Chinese 
depends  almost  wholly  upon  tone,  and  its  syntax 
may  be  compressed  into  a  few  lines ;  English,  on 
the  contrary,  which  is  so  rich  in  syntax  and  idiom, 
is  correspondingly  poor  in  intonation.  We  may 
say  that  tone  or  accent  is  to  the  primitive  man 
what  syntax  is  to  his  civilised  successors.1  In 
other  words,  what  civilisation  expresses  by  intel- 
lectual processes,  barbarism  expresses  by  the  phy- 
sical management  of  voice  and  muscles.  Accent 
goes  along  with  gesticulation  ;  and  action  is  still 
needed  by  the  orator-  who  has  to  appeal  to  the 
passions  and  not  to  the  reason  of  his  hearers. 
The  important  part  played  by  accent  in  the  early 
history  of  speech  is  still  but  inadequately  recog- 
nised. The  gima  and  vriddhi  of  the  Sanskrit 
grammarians  are  as  much  the  result  of  it  as  those 
diacritical  marks  which  were  invented  by  Aristo- 
phanes of  Byzantium.  A  considerable  proportion 
of  the  phenomena  which  we  observe  in  Aryan 
grammar  is  the  effect  of  accentuation  ;  and  many 
of  the  changes  undergone  by  the  flections  are  due 
to  the  attempt  to  lay  the  accent  on  the  modifying 

1  Tones  in  Chinese,  however,  eeetn  to  be  rather  the  result  of  an 
attempt  to  counterbalance  the  action  of  Phonetic  Decay  in  cutting 
off  final  letters.  Mr  Edkins  stated  before  the  Oriental  Congress  at 
London,  in  1874,  that  it  takes  about  1200  years  to  produce  a  new 
tone. 


32  SPHERE  OF  COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY. 

element  of  the  word.  Why,  for  instance,  we  may 
ask,  do  we  have  oZSa,  olaOa,  o2Se,  in  the  singular, 
but  lo-tov,  ta-fiev,  tare,  to-aac,  in  the  dual  and  plural  ? 
And  why  is  this  distinction  in  the  length  and 
quality  of  the  vowel  in  the  two  numbers  preserved  in 
all  the  cognate  languages,  so  that  Sanskrit  gives  us 
vcda,  vettka,  veda, — vidwd,  vidat/ius,  vidatus  ;  vidmdy 
vidd,  vidus  ;  and  Gothic,  vait,  vaist,  vait,  vituts ; 
vitum,  vitutk,  xitun  ?  Accent  alone  can  answer 
the  question.  When  the  vowel  of  the  singular 
was  gunated,  that  is,  raised  in  clearness  and 
emphasis,  the  terminations  of  the  singular  had 
grown  into  such  common  and  familiar  use  as  to 
convey  the  ideas  which  they  denoted  without  the 
aid  of  any  distinguishing  sign  or  stress.  It  was 
otherwise,  however,  with  the  terminations  of  the 
dual  and  plural.  These  still  had  a  somewhat 
strange  sound,  and  required  a  greater  effort  of  in- 
telligence to  connect  them  with  the  conceptions 
they  denoted  ;  consequently  they  were  brought  out 
into  distinct  relief  by  placing  the  accent  upon 
them.1      Something   not  unlike  this  has  been  the 


1  In  the  same  manner  we  must  explain  the  Greek  rule  which 
throws  the  accent  upon  the  first  member  of  a  compound  whenever 
possible.  The  Aryan  languages,  which  prefix  the  genitive  relation, 
necessarily  lay  greater  stress  upon  the  second^woid,  the  last  spoken 
in  point  of  time;  and  the  first  word  of  a  compound  is  consequently 
in  danger  of  being  slurred  over.  This  is  prevented  by  its  receiving 
the  accent.     Ferhaps  the  apparently  arbitrary  difference   in   the 


RELATION  TO  THE  OTHER  SCIENCES.  33 

procedure  of  those  languages  which,  like  the  Tibe- 
tan dialects,  form  the  present  tense  out  of  the 
aorist  by  doubling  the  last  consonant  and  adding 
a  firm  vowel;  as  in  ngd  ggeddo,  "  I  do,"  from 
ngd  gyed,  "I  did."  Here  the  indefinite  time  of 
the  aorist  is  made  definite  by  a  prolongation  of 
the  syllable,  and  the  distinctness  of  the  idea  of 
present  time  marked  out  by  an  emphatic  dwelling 
upon  the  uttered  word. 

But  these  are  not  all  the  results  that  may  be 
traced  to  the  principle  of  Emphasis.  The  origin 
of  poetry  itself  may  be  referred  to  the  wish  to  set 

accentuation  of  irevre  and  eirra,  which  is  also  found  in  the  Sanskrit 
pdnchan  and  saptan,  is  due  to  the  attempt  to  distinguish  between 
two  participles  of  similar  meaning,  which  were  set  apart  to  denote 
numerals  at  successive  epochs.  Panchan  has  been  connected  by 
Goldstucker  with pashchdt,  "  behind"  or  "after,"  and  saptan  is  pro- 
bably derived  from  the  root  sap  (sak,  sequor,  'iirui],  " following."  It  is 
possible  that  the  primary  meaning  of  panchan  was  still  remembered 
when  saptan  was  taken  to  signify  "seven  ; "  and  thetwo  numbers  were 
accordingly  marked  off  from  one  anotherby  a  change  in  the  position  of 
the  accent,  much  as  we  distinguish,  by  a  similar  contrivance,  between 
the  substantial  and  verbal  uses  of  words  like  torment  and  torment, 
cdmpact  and  compact,  or  between  two  words  of  the  same  form  but 
different  signification,  such  as  incense,  and  incense,  minute  and  minute. 
The  fact  that  the  Greek  gives  us  irevre  instead  of  irevra,  and  the 
Latin  quinque  instead  of  quinquem,  proves  that  the  participial  ending 
had  been  lost  before  the  rise  of  the  Helleno-Italian  dialects.  A  final 
nasal  in  Greek,  even  though  dropped  in  the  classical  speech,  marks 
its  presence  by  preventing  the  original  a  from  undergoing  change ; 
and  when  we  find  irhre  and  quinque  on  the  one  side,  but  e7rra  and 
scptem  on  the  other,  it  is  clear  that  the  older  pdnchan  had  lost  its 
participial  force,  and  become  a  mere  symbol  of  number,  at  an  earlier 
date  than  was  the  case  with  saptdn. 

G 


34  SPHERE  OF  COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY. 

forth  in  clear  and  distinct  language  the  ideas  which 
possess  the  mind.  The  more  primitive  language 
is,  the  more  rhythmical  we  discover  it  to  be ;  in 
fact,  early  speech  may  be  called  a  lyric.  It  is  not 
surprising,  therefore,  that  verse  should  be  the  first 
form  in  which  literature  clothes  itself.  The  deep 
strange  thoughts  which,  with  the  force  of  a  new 
revelation,  are  struggling  to  find  expression  in  the 
soul  of  man,  must  be  invested  with  all  the  strength 
and  distinctness  of  which  language  is  capable ; 
and  as  language  itself  is  poetry,  symbolising  the 
impalpable  things  of  the  spirit  under  the  veil  of 
metaphor,  so  the  earliest  form  of  conscious  lan- 
guage must  be  poetical.  Now  poetry  at  the  outset 
possesses  melody,  and  not  harmony  ;  the  notes 
must  follow  one  another,  each  distinct,  clear,  and 
independent ;  and  the  monotonous  rhythm  which 
meets  us  in  the  verse  of  uncultivated  tribes  is 
generally  characterised  by  alliteration.  But  alli- 
teration is  not  only  useful  as  an  assistance  to  the 
memory  ;  it  serves  to  force  a  particular  sound  upon 
the  attention,  and  to  afford  so  many  resting-places, 
as  it  were,  in  which  the  mind  may  take  in  clearly 
all  that  lies  between.  Throughout  the  course  of 
its  development,  literature  remains  true  to  its  pri- 
mary instinct.  So  long  as  books  are  recited  or 
read,  not  to  convey  knowledge  solely,  but  to  com- 
municate   thought    and    feeling,    distinctness    of 


RELATION  TO  THE  OTHER  SCIENCES.  35 

pronunciation  will  be  of  the  highest  moment.  It 
is  only  in  an  age  of  science,  when  we  read  not  for 
the  sake  of  the  style,  but  of  the  matter,  that  the 
principle  of  Phonetic  Decay  takes  the  place  of  the 
principle  of  Emphasis.  While  thought  and  its 
expression  are  but  the  two  sides  of  the  same  prism, 
while  the  language  is  regarded  as  an  end  in  itself, 
and  not  a  mere  instrument  for  the  imparting  of 
scientific  truths  or  statistical  facts  or  commercial 
instructions,  every  syllable  will  be  watched  with 
jealous  care,  and  its  due  weight  and  meaning 
assigned  to  each.  It  is  in  this  way  that  we  can 
explain  the  precision  and  crystallisation  of  the 
literary  language  of  Rome,  so  different  in  this 
respect  from  the  ordinarily  spoken  Latin  dialects 
amongst  which  Phonetic  Decay  reigned  supreme. 
The  pronunciation  of  Virgil  and  Horace  was  regu- 
lated by  the  spelling ;  and  the  tendency  of  Latin 
poetry  was  more  and  more  to  avoid  elisions.  It 
was  this  stereotyped,  unreal  condition  of  literary 
Latin,  as  has  been  acutely  remarked,1  which  has 
caused  the  same  phenomenon  to  reappear  in  mo- 
dern literary  Italian.  Modern  Italian  is  the  dialect 
of  Tuscany,  and  Tuscany,  screened  as  it  is  by 
mountains,  was  the  part  of  the  Peninsula  least 
affected  by  the  inroad  of  the  Teutonic  nations. 
The  Tuscan  population  long  preserved  the  relics  of 

1  Donaldson,  "  Varronianus,"  pp.  530-2. 


36  SPHERE  OF  COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY. 

the  old  Roman  literature  and  civilisation,  and  "  the 
studied  accuracy  with  which  the  Romans  of  the 
Augustan  age  pronounced  their  Groecised  poetry  " 
still  lingers  in  that  standard  Italian  lansruasre  of 
which  it  has  been  so  truly  said  that  it  cannot  be 
pronounced  both  well  and  quickly.  We  must  go 
to  the  other  dialects  of  Italy  to  find  Phonetic 
Decay  in  unrestricted  action. 

Both  Phonetic  Decay  and  Emphasis,  however, 
have  their  root  in  the  same  utilitarian  object : 
both  are  intended  to  aid  the  memory.  As  lazi- 
ness would  save  trouble  not  only  to  the  breath  but 
also  to  the  recollection,  so  the  effort  to  be  distinct 
has  the  same  end  in  view.  As  we  should  burden 
the  memory  by  a  needless  string  of  sounds  which 
are  not  wanted  as  soon  as  the  understanding  has 
seized  the  idea,  so  we  should  burden  it  equally 
were  we  not  to  furnish  it  with  the  means  of  easily 
determining  what  idea  it  is  that  is  intended.  To 
give  too  much  or  too  little  to  the  comprehension, 
in  order  that  it  may  take  in  and  remember  the 
meaning  of  what  is  suggested  by  symbolic  speech, 
is  alike  contrary  to  the  economic  provisions  of 
nature.  Hence  arise  the  two  great  principles  which 
underlie  the  working  of  all  those  laws  of  language 
which  it  is  the  business  of  our  study  to  ascertain 
by  careful  observation  and  accurate  verification.1 

1  In  correspondence  with  what  I  have  termed  Phonetic  Decay, 


RELATION  TO  THE  OTHER  SCIENCES.  37 

Comparative  Philology,  then,  must  be  defined 
as  an  inductive  science,  pursuing  the  same  method 
of  inquiry  as  geology  or  biology,  and  engaged  in 
the  discovery  of  laws  or  regulative  generalisations 
which  may  possibly  be  some  day  applied  deduc- 
tively. But  there  is  one  point  in  which,  in  com- 
mon with  the  other  sciences  which  concern  the 
human  mind,  Comparative  Philology  differs  from 
geology.  It  is  an  historical,  as  distinguished 
from  a  physical,  science.  In  the  one  case,  the 
sum  of  the  forces  at  work  remains  always  the 
same — the  same  processes  and  the  same  results 
operate  still  upon  the  surface  of  the  earth  that 
operated  millions  of  years  ago ;  in  the  other  case, 
the  sum  of  the  forces  increases  in  an  accelerated 
ratio.  Every  new  generation  is  influenced  by  the 
preceding  one ;  and  that  influence  is  a  fresh  ele- 
ment of  motive  power  introduced  into  our  calcula- 
tions.     Human  volition  is  the  result  of  so  many 

Emphasis,  and  Analogy,  Mr  Henry  Sweet,  in  his  valuable  work  on 
"The  History  of  English  Sounds,"  1874,  lays  down  (p.  7)  that  all 
changes  of  sound  may  be  classed  as — 1.  organic,  2.  imitative,  and  3.  \ 
inorganic.  "  Organic  changes  are  those  which  are  the  direct  result 
of  certain  tendencies  of  the  organs  of  speech  :  all  the  changes 
commonly  regarded  as  weakenings  fall  under  this  head.  Imitative 
changes  are  the  result  of  an  unsuccessful  attempt  at  imitation.  Inor- 
ganic changes,  lastly,  are  caused  by  purely  external  causes."  A  little 
further  on  he  remarks,  that  some  changes  "  do  not  require  the  hypo- 
thesis of  muscular  economy,  but  even  run  quite  counter  to  it ;  as 
when  an  open  consonant  is  converted  into  a  stop,  a  by  no  means 
uncommon  phenomenon  in  the  Teutonic  languages." 


38  SPHERE  OF  COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY. 

obscure  and  complicated  causes,  as  to  appear  at  first 
sight  mere  caprice  and  chance  ;  and  an  historical 
science  like  Philology  is  eminently  subject  to  the 
will  of  man.  Then  again  we  have  to  admit  the 
influence  of  the  individual,  who  may  invent  and 
give  currency  to  new  words,  or  change  the  social 
condition  of  a  country,  though,  strictly  speaking, 
this  is  only  another  way  of  regarding  the  element 
of  volition.  In  short,  instead  of  the  simpler,  un- 
varying processes  of  nature,  which,  for  the  most 
part,  can  be  tested  by  experiment,  we  have  to  deal 
with  the  infinitely  complicated  developments  of 
human  thought  and  action,  in  which  observation 
alone  can  be  our  guide.  Language,  as  we  find  it, 
is  as  much  the  creation  of  man  as  painting  or  any 
other  of  the  arts  ;  and  thus  all  possibility  of  forming 
a  science  out  of  what  would  be  dependent  upon  the 
arbitrary  caprice  of  the  individual  would  seem  to 
be  out  of  the  question.  Such,  however,  is  not 
the  case.  It  may  be  true  that  the  individual 
exercises  some  influence  upon  speech ;  that  indi- 
vidual writers,  for  instance,  such  as  Neckar  and 
Reichenbach,  have  brought  in  new  words  like 
sepals  and  od  force,  but  this  influence  after  all 
is  infinitesimal!}'  small.  Language  belongs  to 
the  multitude  ;  it  is  the  medium  of  communica- 
tion between  man  and  man ;  and  consequently 
must  be  the  combined  product  of  causes  and  influ- 


RELATION  TO  THE  OTHER  SCIENCES.      39 

ences  which  affect  all  alike.  Now.  these  causes  can 
only  be  general ;  and  if  on  the  one  side  they  are 
psychological,  they  are  on  the  other  side  still  more 
physical.  The  constitution  of  the  human  mind  is 
fundamentally  the  same  at  all  times  and  in  all 
places ;  every  one,  be  he  savage  or  civilised,  must 
become  conscious  of  objects  in  much  the  same 
way,  and  must  express  his  first  needs  in  a  similar 
manner.  Once  grant  the  power  of  forming  articu- 
late speech,  and  there  can  never  be  much  differ- 
ence in  the  attempts  to  realise  it.  All  men  have 
at  bottom  the  same  primary  instincts  and  pas- 
sions, otherwise  they  would  not  be  men ;  and  the 
primitive  experiences  of  all  races  must  have  been 
almost  identical.  The  life  and  necessities  of  the  bar- 
barian of  to-day  differ  but  little  from  those  of  the 
barbarian  of  yesterday.  Even  greater  than  the 
psychological  similarity  is  the  physical  similarity. 
We  are  all  cast  in  the  same  mould.  We  are  all 
given  the  same  physical  machinery  for  producing 
sounds ;  and  that  machinery  has  everywhere  the 
same  restrictions.  We  cannot  speak  without 
opening  our  lips.  How  far  this  machinery  may 
be  modified  by  food,  climate,  and  education,  is  a 
question  which  will  have  to  be  considered  here- 
after ;  in  this  place  it  is  sufficient  to  notice  that 
it  can  only  be  modified,  never  radically  changed. 
Such  modifications,  moreover,   cannot   be   indivi- 


40  SPHERE  OF  COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY. 

dual ;  they  must  affect  a  whole  people,  for  lan- 
guage is  social  and  national,  not  individual. 

Language  exists  for  the  sake  of  society  :  the 
self-sufficient  man  would  have  no  need  of  such  an 
instrument  of  intercourse  with  his  kind.  We 
speak  in  order  that  we  may  be  understood ;  and 
consequently  we  are  obliged  to  say  what  is  intelli- 
gible to  those  around  us.  The  child  learns  the 
idiom  of  his  parents,  and  cannot  unlearn  it  if  he 
would.  It  becomes  part  of  himself  and  his  nature 
before  he  has  arrived  at  an  age  to  think  about  it ; 
and  so  long  as  he  remains  a  member  of  a  particular 
society,  he  is  bound  to  talk  the  language  of  that 
society.  The  invention  of  a  new  language  would 
be  an  useless  waste  of  labour ;  he  could  not  expect 
any  one  else  to  learn  it,  and  so  the  whole  raison 
d'etre  of  language  would  be  lost.  The  individual, 
as  such,  has  no  language  :  language  is  the  product 
and  instrument  of  society,  whose  fortunes  it  repre- 
sents, whose  laws  it  obeys,  and  whose  progress  it 
shares.  As  particular  societies  tend  to  lose  their 
insulatioD,  and  to  be  more  and  more  assimilated  to 
each  other  with  the  advance  of  civilisation,  so  also 
it  is  with  the  dialects  which  severally  belong  to 
them. 

Thus  it  is  that  the  element  of  iD  dividual  un- 
certainty is  eliminated  from  the  study.  Although 
in  one  sense  the  creation  of  man,  language  is  yet 


RELATION  TO  THE  OTHER  SCIENCES.  41 

the  outgrowth  of  general  causes,  and  governed  by 
general  laws,  partly  mental  and  partly  physical. 
By  extending  the  area  of  our  comparison,  we  are 
enabled  to  make  these  laws  more  and  more 
general,  and  thus  more  and  more  to  exclude  the 
caprices  and  idiosyncrasies  of  particular  nations. 
It  is  true  that  these  idiosyncrasies  will  have  to  be 
explained ;  but  it  can  only  be  done  by  the  light 
of  the  general  laws :  we  can  only  recognise  and 
understand  the  exception  by  knowing  the  rule. 
Hence  our  inductions  ought  to  be  as  wide  as 
possible,  and  our  collection  of  facts  of  the  most 
extensive  character. 

Now,  these  facts  are  words,  or  rather  judgments 
expressed  in  words  ;  and  since  these  are  the  out- 
ward embodiments  of  thought,  the  reflections  of 
the  passing  phases  of  the  mind  subjected  to  the 
restrictive  conditions  of  our  physical  nature,  it  is 
clear  that,  just  as  thought  is  progressive,  and  can 
only  be  studied  historically,  so  words  also  must  be 
subjected  to  an  historic  treatment.  In  so  far  as 
thought  is  stationary,  it  is  unconscious,  and  must 
be  treated  physically  like  the  rest  of  brute  nature  : 
with  consciousness,  history  begins.  It  is  the  same 
with  language  :  consciousness  first  shows  itself  in 
the  period  of  roots,  and  with  this  period  accord- 
ingly Comparative  Philology  commences.  Behind 
lie  the  unconscious,   instinctive   beginnings  that 


42  SPHERE  OF  COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY. 

led  to  articulate  speech,  but  our  linguistic  data  do 
not  carry  us  so  far ;  the  investigation  of  this 
primeval  age  of  humanity  belongs  to  physical 
science,  not  to  Glottology. 

Here,  then,  is  one  of  the  boundaries  of  the 
science  to  which  I  have  alluded.  Our  data  are 
limited  to  the  words  that  can  be  collected  from  the 
mouths  of  living  speakers,  or  have  been  committed 
to  the  safe  keeping  of  writing.  It  is  only  where  a 
group  of  cognate  languages  has  changed  but  little 
that  we  can  go  back  much  beyond  the  invention  of 
writing.  Practically,  therefore,  we  are  bounded, 
so  far  as  time  is  concerned,  by  the  earliest  written 
records  which  we  possess,  whether  in  Egypt,  Baby- 
lonia, or  China,  or  by  a  literature  like  that  of  the 
Rig-Yeda,  which  has  been  stereotyped  by  tradi- 
tional recitation.  It  is  absolutely  necessary  that 
our  facts  should  be  accurate,  that  is,  that  we  should 
know  the  exact  forms  and  meanings  at  any  given 
period  of  the  words  with  which  we  are  dealing ; 
and  this  can  only  be  done  by  the  help  of  contem- 
poraneous evidence,  or  by  the  inductions  built 
upon  this.  It  has  been  found  possible  to  construct 
a  dictionary  of  the  primitive  Aryan  language  ;  but 
this  is  only  because  the  cotemporary  evidence 
we  possess  of  the  different  branch-languages  of 
the  Aryan  family  of  speech  is  sufficiently  large  to 
enable  us,  by  the  use  of  the  comparative  method, 


RELATION  TO  THE  OTHER  SCIENCES.  43 

to  determine  what  must  have  been  the  parent 
sound  which  alone  could  have  given  rise  to  the 
several  varieties  of  the  same  word.  And,  after 
all,  much  in  this  dictionary  must  remain  un- 
certain ;  we  cannot  always  be  sure  of  the  original 
form  of  a  vocable,  and  words  possessed  by  the 
parent  language  may  often  have  been  lost  alto- 
gether, or  have  left  but  slight  traces  behind  them. 
Of  course,  in  this  work  of  reconstructing  parent 
languages,  or  of  probing  language  in  general  to 
its  roots,  we  obtain  additional  light  and  assistance 
from  other  sciences,  such  as  psychology,  pre- 
historic archaeology,  or  physiology. 

From  all  this  it  will  be  evident  to  every  one 
what  is  the  object  and  scope  of  Comparative  Phil- 
ology.1    It    is    an    historic    science,  which  traces 

1  Professor  Whitney,  at  the  beginning  of  his  lectures  on  "  Lan- 
guage and  the  Study  of  Language,"  p.  6,  thus  admirably  describes 
the  work  of  "  the  linguistic  student  :  " — "  To  assemble,  arrange,  and 
explain  the  whole  body  of  linguistic  phenomena,  and  as  thoroughly 
to  comprehend  them,  in  each  separate  part  and  under  all  aspects, 
is  his  endeavour.  His  province,  while  touching,  on  the  one  hand, 
upon  that  of  the  philologist,  or  student  of  human  thought  and 
knowledge  as  deposited  in  literary  records,  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
upon  that  of  the  mere  linguist,  or  learner  of  languages  for  their 
practical  use,  and  while  exchanging  friendly  aid  with  both  of  these, 
is  yet  distinct  from  either.  He  deals  with  language  as  the  instru- 
ment of  thought, — its  means  of  expression,  not  its  record  ;  he  deals 
with  simple  words  and  phrases,  not  with  sentences  and  texts.  He 
aims  to  trace  out  the  inner  life  of  language,  to  discover  its  origin, 
to  follow  its  successive  steps  of  growth,  and  to  deduce  the  laws 
that  govern  its  mutations,  the  recognition  of  which  shall  account 


44  SPHERE  OF  COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY. 

the  gradual  evolution  of  human  thought  and 
action  as  photographed  in  the  enduring  monu- 
ments of  language — the  outward  expression  of 
that  thought  and  action — and  which  has  its  roots 
far  down  in  the  dawning  consciousness  of  primi- 
tive man.  So  far  as  man  is  man,  so  far,  that  is 
to  say,  as  he  has  emerged  from  a  mere  brute  life, 
and  has  awakened  to  consciousness,  he  has  a 
history,  and  that  history  may  yet  be  recovered 
either  wholly  or  in  part  from  a  scientific  study  of 
language.  The  facts  with  which  this  study  deals 
are  words  or  stereotyped  thoughts ;  these  it  has 
to  compare  and  classify,  and  thus  determine  the 
general  laws  to  which  they  are  subject.  The 
general  laws,  made  up  of  a  variety  of  subordinate 
ones,  belong  partly  to  psychology,  partly  to  phon- 
ology ;  the  first  lays  down  the  conditions  under 
which  the  awakening  and  developing  mind  views 
objects  and  their  relations  ;  the  second  the  con- 
ditions under  which  sounds  are  produced  by  the 
human  voice,  and  the  mind  is  enabled  to  express 
itself.  Phonology  is  of  the  highest  importance  for 
getting  at  the  laws  of  speech,  since  it  ascertains 
the  relation  of  sounds  one  to   another,  and  thus 

to  hirci  for  both  the  unity  and  the  variety  of  its  present  manifested 
phases  ;  and,  along  with  this,  to  apprehend  the  nature  of  language 
as  a  human  endowment,  its  relation  to  thought,  its  influence  upon 
the  development  of  intellect  and  the  growth  of  knowledge,  and  the 
history  of  mind  and  of  knowledge  as  reflected  in  it." 


RELATION  TO  THE  OTHER  SCIENCES.      45 

explains  the  changes  and  kinship  of  words ;  but 
it  must  not  be  made  synonymous  with  Compara- 
tive Philology,  as  is  so  often  implicitly  done.  It  is 
one  of  the  chief  and  most  valuable  instruments  of 
the  science,  but  it  is  not  commensurate  with  the 
science.  The  outward  and  physical  is  the  most 
accessible  to  observation,  and,  therefore,  to  com- 
parison ;  but  words  may  often  be  phonetically 
identical  which  yet  have  nothing  to  do  with  each 
other,  like  the  sounds  set  apart  by  most  languages 
to  denote  "  father  "  and  "  mother,"  or  the  roots 
d/ia,  "  to  suck,"  and  dM,  u  to  place,"  in  our  own 
family  of  speech.  This  mistaken  conception  of 
the  place  of  phonology  is  the  modern  repre- 
sentative of  the  notion  that  etymology  is  the 
beginning  and  end  of  philology,  and  that  when  a 
word  had  been  tracked  back  through  cognate 
dialects  to  the  most  original  form  attainable, 
nothing  further  was  needed.  This  was  the  error 
of  the  lexicographer,  just  as  the  phonological 
misconception  is  the  error  of  the  grammarian. 
Words  are  of  no  value  in  themselves  except  to  a 
dictionary-maker ;  they  are  only  valuable  in  so 
far  as  they  reflect  and  embody  thought ;  and  the 
object  of  a  true  philological  etymology  is  to  illus- 
trate or  discover  the  laws  which  have  governed  the 
evolution  of  thought,  or  rather  the  way  in  which 
that  evolution  has  been  determined  by  material 


46  SPHERE  OF  COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY. 

and  social  circumstances.  It  is  hardly  likely  that 
we  shall  ever  attain  to  a  perfect  knowledge  of 
these,  and  lay  bare  the  whole  mystery  of  the 
origin  of  roots  and  the  history  of  grammatical 
relations.  Should  we  do  so,  Comparative  Phil- 
ology would  become  an  exact  deductive  science, 
and  we  should  be  able  to  predict  the  future  destiny 
of  language  and  languages.  Meanwhile,  we  have 
to  be  content  with  an  examination  of  the  past 
or  the  present,  so  far  as  this  is  open  to  us,  test- 
ing our  conclusions  by  the  facts  of  history  and 
psychology,  and  by  the  laws  which  control  the 
utterance  of  sounds. 

To  explain  more  clearly  what  is  meant,  we  may 
quote,  by  way  of  example,  the  general  law  that  all 
languages  have  a  period  of  roots  in  which  the 
several  distinctions  between  the  parts  of  speech 
lay  undeveloped  in  a  kind  of  embryonic  common 
sound.  The  empirical  laws  of  phonology  enable 
us  to  trace  the  words  of  a  civilised  community 
back  to  this  common  source  ;  and  the  law  itself  is 
verified  by  what  psychology  teaches  us  of  the 
gradual  growth  of  the  mind,  and  by  the  facts  of 
ethnology,  with  its  illustrations  of  modern  savage 
intelligence,  and  of  prehistoric  archaaology,  with 
its  rough-hewn  flints  and  other  evidences  of  childish 
ignorance. 

Thus,  on   all   sides,    Comparative   Philology  is 


RELATION  TO  THE  OTHER  SCIENCES.      47 

brought  into  contact  with  its  sister  sciences.  If 
lan°;ua£e  is  the  reflection  of  common  thought,  it 
is  at  once  the  product  and  the  mirror  of  society. 
It  will,  therefore,  bear  the  impress  of  every  move- 
ment of  society,  and  its  phenomena  consequently 
will  in  large  part  be  explicable  only  by  means  of 
the  social  sciences.  Why,  for  instance,  is  Lithu- 
anian, one  of  the  least  advanced  members  of  the 
Aryan  family,  more  conservative  in  its  retention 
of  many  primitive  grammatical  forms  than  even 
Sanskrit ;  while,  as  a  general  rule,  tribes  in  a  low 
state  of  civilisation,  like  the  Ostiaks  or  the  Bush- 
men, are  continually  changing  the  character  of  their 
idioms,  so  that  in  the  course  of  a  single  generation 
two  neighbouring  villages  become  mutually  unin- 
telligible? Why,  again,  did  the  Northmen  give 
up  their  language  in  France,  and  retain  it  in 
Ireland  ?  Comparative  philology  alone  cannot 
furnish  the  answer.  Similarly  we  must  go  to 
physiology,  if  we  would  investigate  the  influence 
of  food  and  climate  upon  the  organs  of  speech, 
important  as  this  question  is  to  the  philologist, 
who  finds  that  every  Polynesian  syllable  must  end 
in  a  vowel,  or  that  the  Chinese  have  to  turn  every 
foreign  r  into  I  before  they  can  pronounce  it,  or 
that  Portuguese  is  more  closely  related  to  French 
than  the  intervening  Spanish,  or  that  the  Teu- 
tonic coast  population  from  Denmark  to  Flanders 


48  SPHERE  OF  COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY. 

drops  the  final  d  of  a  syllable,  while  English,  on 
the  contrary,  tends  to  introduce  an  expletive  one,  as 
in  sound  and  compound.  One  of  the  most  impor- 
tant problems  which  now  await  solution  is  to  ex- 
plain the  causes  of  that  regular  shifting  of  sounds 
which  words  undergo  in  different  connate  lan°;ua°:es. 
Why,  for  example,  must  a  Latin  d  answer  to  an 
English  t  and  a  High  German  z  ?  l  or  what  brought 
about  the  loss  of  a  guttural  before  a  labial  in  some 
dialects,  and  the  retention  of  it  in  others  ?  Some 
common  cause  must  have  been  at  work  to  produce 
apa-s  in  Sanskrit,  eau  in  French,  and  aua  in  the 
Romansch  of  the  Engadine,  by  the  side  of  the 
Gothic  ahva,  Latin  aqua,  Italian  acqica,  and 
Spanish  agua?     It  is  scarcely  an  answer  to  say 

1  Mr  Sweet's  admirable  monograph  on  this  subject  (in  the 
Appendix  to  his  edition  of  "  Gregory's  Pastoral  Care,"  pp.  496- 
504),  ought  to  be  studied.  He  remarks  that  "  the  oldest  chaDges  of 
t  into  d,  and  d  into  t,  must  have  occurred  simultaneously.  .  .  .  The 
phenomenon  is,  in  fact,  a  case  of  simple  confusion  or  interchange,  as 
familiarly  exemplified  in  the  vulgar  hair  for  air  and  'are  for  hare, 
when  heard,  as  is  not  unf requently  the  case,  from  the  same  mouth." 

2  The  retention  of  the  guttural  cannot  be  ascribed  to  the  in- 
fluence of  a  colder,  more  northern  climate,  since  the  natives  of 
Durham  and  Yorkshire  say  wick  for  quick,  uricken  for  quicken,  and 
a  proverb  current  amoug  the  inhabitants  of  the  Engadine  assigns 
them  nine  months  of  winter  aud  three  of  cold  ;  nor  to  the  mountain- 
ous nature  of  the  country,  since  the  Greeks,  with  their  ittttos  and 
eirio,  dwelt  in  an  incomparably  more  rugged  region  than  the  Latins, 
the  people  of  "  the  plain,"  with  their  equus  and  scquor.  There  is 
here  no  question  of  an  original  inability  to  distinguish  between  h 
and  t,  such  as  is  quoted  by  Professor  Max  Miiller  (Lectures,  ii.  pp. 


RELATION  TO  THE  OTHER  SCIENCES.      49 

that  this  cause  was  laziness,  the  general  principle 
of  phonetic  change,  because  we  want  to  know  why 
this  cause  should  have  acted  in  some  cases  and 
not  in  others. 

It  may  be  said  that  the  reason  will  be  furnished 
by  history.  This  is  perfectly  true.  If  we  had  a 
complete  history  of  the  movements  of  society,  we 
should  have  a  key  to  the  changes  of  language 
which  are  its  expression  and  reflection.  But  such 
a  history  would  be  nothing  more  than  an  expo- 
sition of  the  laws  which  govern  society ;  and 
as  we  do  not  and  cannot  possess  it,  we  must 
endeavour  to  find  out  these  laws  by  some  other 
method.  When  once  the  laws  have  been  dis- 
covered, that  fragrnentary  and  superficial  series  of 
biographies  which  we  term  history  can  be  applied 
for  the  purpose  of  verification.  It  is  thus  that 
the  generalisations  of  an  historic  science  are  tested. 
As  in  the  physical  sciences  we  verify  our  conclusions 

167,  168,  182)  as  existing  among  the  Sandwich  Islanders,  and  which 
reappears  among  the  lower  classes  in  Canada,  who  say  mehier  for 
metier,  moikie  for  motile.  This  confusion  of  sounds  merely  shows 
the  near  relationship  of  the  dental  and  guttural,  like  our  own  com- 
mon pronunciation  of  at  least  as  a'cleast,  or  the  conversion  of  char- 
cutier  in  the  Parisian  dialect  into  chartutier.  What  we  want  to 
know  is  why  some  tribes  should  have  chosen  the  guttural  and  others 
the  dental  or  labial  ?  Why  should  the  Wallachs,  the  descendants 
of  the  Roman  soldiers  who  settled  in  Dacia,  say  apa  for  aqua  ?  We 
can  hardly  grant,  as  Professor  Max  Muller  suggests,  that  they  all 
came  from  those  Oscan  districts  of  Italy  in  which  the  qu  had  lost 
its  guttural  and  changed  the  accompanying  labial  into  a  p. 

D 


50  SPHERE  OF  COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY. 

by  an  appeal  to  experiment,  so  in  philology,  our 
inductions  can  be  verified  by  a  reference  to  the 
known  facts  of  history.  The  clear  traces  of  a 
Teutonic  influence  in  French  point  to  a  German 
occupation  of  the  country,  and  this  we  know 
from  history  was  actually  the  case.  Arabic  words 
in  Spanish  afford  evidence  of  a  contact  with  the 
Moors  ;  and  the  relation  of  the  Romance  languages 
to  Latin  necessitates  philological  conclusions  which 
are  borne  out  by  the  statements  of  annalists. 
Such  general  principles  even  as  the  ascription  of 
phonetic  decay  to  laziness  may  be  confirmed  by 
historical  instances  like  the  Norman  conquest  of 
England,  where  the  loss  of  inflections  was  accele- 
rated by  the  attempt  of  a  foreign  population  to 
speak  the  language  of  the  country  with  the  least 
possible  trouble  to  themselves.  From  cases  like 
these,  which  can  be  tested  by  a  direct  appeal  to 
history,  we  may  proceed  by  analogy  to  others  in 
which  such  a  test  cannot  be  applied.  But  it  is 
evident  that  the  further  we  recede  from  cotem- 
poraneous  history,  and  the  more  unable  we  are 
to  verify  our  inductions  by  its  means,  the  more 
hazardous  and  provisional  will  our  conclusions  be. 
Hence  some  of  the  primary  laws  of  the  science 
can  best  be  obtained  from  a  study  of  modern 
European  languages,  though  we  must  be  upon  our 
guard   against  applying   the   results  gained  from 


RELATION  TO  THE  OTHER  SCIENCES.      51 

these  to  languages  which  are  not  occidental,  or 
which  do  not  stand  upon  the  same  level  of  civili- 
sation and  religious  progress. 

History  is  especially  valuable  in  corroborating 
the  empirical  laws  which  we  discover,  those,  namely, 
of  which  the  reason  cannot  be  given,  but  which 
fall    under    some  higher   and  more  general   law. 
Psychology  has  more  to  do  with  the  general  laws, 
in  so  far  as  these  relate  not  so  much  to  the  external 
accidents  as  to  the  inner  meaning  and  structure  of 
language.     In  fact,  just  as  a  philosophy  of  history, 
in  which  the  attention  is  turned  to  the  motives 
and  connection  of  outward  events,  depends  upon 
psychology,  so  also  does  philology,  which  displays 
the  laws  that  govern  our  mental  development,  not 
in  action,  but  in  speech.     Physiology,  on  the  other 
hand,  deals  with  the  external,  and   is  therefore 
mostly  applicable   to   phonology  alone.      Here  we 
have  to  ask  it   to  help  us  in   determining  what 
sounds   may   pass  into    one    another,   and    under 
what  conditions   they  may   do   so.      To  look    too 
exclusively  at  this  side  of  the  science,  however,  is 
to  repeat   the  mistake  of  the  last   century,   and 
to  see  nothing  but  mechanical  materialism  every- 
where.    We   require   the   aid,  not  only    of  those 
sciences   which    are   concerned  with  the    external 
framework  and  circumstances  of  man,  but  yet  more 
urgently  of  those  which  trace  the  growth  of  his 


52  SPHERE  OF  COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY. 

spiritual  life,  like  jurisprudence  or  history,  how- 
ever much  these  may  lead  us  back  to  a  dim  start- 
ing-point, where  the  distinction  between  matter 
and  spirit,  between  nature  and  consciousness, 
seems  almost  imperceptible. 

But  dim  as  it  may  be,  we  must  remember  that 
it  is  a  starting-point.  Comparative  Philology 
cannot  get  beyond  the  range  of  its  facts,  beyond 
the  commencement  of  conscious  articulate  speech. 
Language  for  it  is  not  the  language  of  gesture, 
but  the  language  of  articulated  utterance.  The 
investigation  of  language,  in  the  wider  sense,  as 
including  looks,  play  of  features,  modulation  of 
voice,  and  gesticulation,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
finger-language  of  the  deaf  and  dumb,  must  fall 
under  a  more  comprehensive  science.  The  exami- 
nation of  this  inarticulate  speech  belongs  to  phy- 
siology ;  and  Mr  Darwin,  in  his  work  on  the 
"  Expression  of  the  Emotions  in  Men  and  Ani- 
mals," has  already  broken  ground  in  this  direction. 
But  it  is  one  of  those  sides  of  physiology  which 
most  directly  bear  upon  our  science,  and  from 
which  we  may  hereafter  expect  the  most  important 
aid.  In  fact,  if  ever  we  are  to  solve  the  problem 
of  the  origin,  not  of  language  in  the  philological 
sense  of  the  word,  but  of  articulate  speech  itself, 
the  subject-matter  of  philology,  it  can  only  be  by 
special  physiological  researches   upon    this   head. 


RELATION  TO  THE  OTHER  SCIENCES.       53 

Hackel  has  endeavoured  to  trace  the  earliest  utter- 
ances of  man  to  the  cries  of  the  ape ;  and,  as 
Professor  Benfey  points  out,  the  physical  acces- 
sories of  speech,  as  we  may  call  them,  "  make  the 
purely  human  origin  of  articulate  speech  more 
easily  intelligible  ;  for  we  must  certainly  credit 
them  with  the  power  of  assigning  to  any  sound  or 
combination  of  sounds  the  meaning  which  the  first 
man  who  joined  together  these  articulations  and  their 
accessories  was  impelled  or  intended  to  express  by 
them. ' '  Looks  and  modulation  of  voice  seem  to  agree 
in  all  nations,  gestures  only  in  part,  thus  forming 
the  bridge  by  which  we  may  pass  over  into  spoken 
language,  the  dividing  element  in  human  history. 
The  first  three  are  common  to  man  and  the  lower 
animals  ;  articulate  language  alone,  whatever  may 
be  its  ultimate  source,  draws  the  impassable  line 
between  us  and  the  beasts,  and  makes  man  man. 
This  is  the  justification  of  a  science  of  Comparative 
Philology  taking  its  rank  among  the  historical 
sciences,  and  not  being  merged  in  a  general  science 
in  which  the  brute  and  the  human  are  coupled 
together. 

In  applying  its  laws,  the  practical  rules  to 
be  deduced  from  them  lie  upon  the  surface. 
If  the  facts  with  which  we  start  are  judg- 
ments expressed  in  words,  it  is  obvious  that 
the  grammar   and    structure  of  a  language  will 


54  SPHERE  OF  COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY. 

afford  the  only  sound  basis  of  comparison.  It 
is  not  mere  sounds  that  we  have  to  compare, 
but  the  processes  of  thought  involved  in  them. 
Thought  is  relative,  and  these  relations  may  be 
viewed  in  different  ways.  Only  those  languages 
which  agree  in  their  mode  of  viewing  these 
relations  can  be  grouped  together.  When  once 
agreement  in  grammar  and  structure  has  deter- 
mined the  connection  of  two  tongues,  we  may 
proceed  to  compare  their  lexicons.  The  first  words 
to  be  brought  under  scientific  treatment  are  the 
pronouns  and  numerals,  which  constitute  a  link 
between  grammar  and  vocabulary.  They  are  the 
earliest  attempts  to  reduce  the  abstract  to  the  con- 
crete, to  embody  thought ;  and  the  need  of  their 
frequent  use  will  better  preserve  them  than  is  the 
case  with  other  words.  At  the  same  time,  the 
very  frequency  of  their  use  subjects  them  all 
the  more  to  the  influence  of  phonetic  decay,  and 
so  renders  a  knowledge  of  their  history  the  more 
necessary.  Now,  the  history  of  a  word  can  only 
be  made  out  by  a  comparison  of  dialects,  and  an 
acquaintance  with  the  older  monuments  of  the 
language ;  so  that  until  we  have  traced  back  a 
word  to  the  most  ancient  form  attainable,  we  have 
no  right  to  employ  it  for  the  purposes  of  com- 
parison. We  may  compare  roots,  but  not  deriva- 
tives.    Words  derived  from  the  same  radical  will 


RELATION  TO  THE  OTHER  SCIENCES.      55 

often  assume  different  forms  in  different  languages, 
or  even  in  the  same  one ;  while  words  derived 
from  different  radicals  will,  on  the  other  hand, 
often  assume  the  same  form  in  different  languages, 
or  even  in  the  same  one.  Before  we  conrpare,  we 
must  know  the  history  of  a  vocable.  It  is  equally 
important  that  the  words  should  be  found  in  some 
written  language.  In  no  other  way  can  we  obtain 
documentary  evidence  of  their  older  forms,  and 
compare  the  latter  with  the  forms  of  the  same 
words  in  modern  dialects.  We  shall  never  know 
the  roots  of  the  Polynesian  idioms,  since  we  can 
only  bring  dialects  together  which  are  still  spoken, 
and  the  most  primitive  forms  to  which  such  a 
comparison  will  conduct  us  are  relatively  modern. 
Similarly,  our  area  of  comparison  must  be  wide 
and  varied,  and  not  confined  to  a  group  of  dialects 
which  all  flow  from  one  and  the  same  mother 
speech,  like  the  manuscripts  of  Sophokles  from  a 
single  tenth-century  original.  Unless  we  are 
aided  by  the  sub- Semitic  dialects  of  Africa  and  the 
old  Egyptian,  our  comparative  researches  into  the 
Semitic  family  will  remain  as  unsatisfactory  as 
would  be  the  case  with  the  Romance  languages 
were  all  the  cognate  idioms,  past  and  present, 
utterly  extinct  and  lost.  Written  languages,  more- 
over, guarantee  a  systematic  pronunciation.  We 
are   not  obliged  to  take  our  materials  from   one 


56  SPHERE  OF  COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY. 

observer  who  represents  the  French  un  by  a,  and 
from  another  who  represents  it  by  one.  But  above 
all,  we  must  not  compare  roots  together,  unless 
the  meaning  as  well  as  the  sound  agree,1  or  apply 

1  Significant  change,  though  of  almost  equal  importance  with 
phonetic  change,  has  been  hitherto  but  scantily  attended  to.  The 
changes  of  meaning  undergone  by  words  through  the  influence  of 
the  general  principle  of  analogy  have  been  due  to  two  causes,  which 
are  of  the  same  nature  as  Phonetic  Decay  and  Emphasis.  The  first 
of  these  causes  is  mental  laziness,  or  the  inability  to  understand  the 
full  and  proper  signification  of  a  term  ;  the  second,  the  addition  of 
new  force  and  meaning  to  the  content  of  a  word.  One  of  the  few 
writers  who  have  devoted  much  care  to  the  subject,  the  deter- 
mination of  which  Curtius  calls  "much  harder  "  than  that  of  pho- 
netic mutation  ("  Grundziige  der  Griechischen  Etymologie,"  2d  edit, 
p.  87),  is  Professor  "Whitney,  in  his  lectures  on  "  Language  and  the 
Study  of  Language."  He  there  sums  up  the  processes  whereby 
words  change  their  meaning  under  the  two  heads  of — (1.)  Specialisa- 
tion of  general  terms  ;  and  (2.)  Generalisation  of  special  terms 
(p.  106).  A  more  thorough-going  and  highly  suggestive  discussion 
of  the  subject  will  be  found  in  Pott's  Introduction  to  the  fifth  and 
last  volume  of  his  great  "  Wurzel-Worterbuch  der  indogermani- 
schen  Sprachen."  After  drawing  attention  to  the  fact  that  the 
same  conception  is  expressed  in  different  languages,  sometimes  in 
the  same  way,  sometimes  dissimilarly,  he  groups  the  causes  of 
significant  change  in  seven  classes.  (1.)  Words  may  become  defined 
by  either  the  narrowing  or  the  widening  of  their  meaning.  (Thus 
&\oyov,  "  the  irrational  brute,"  is  confined  to  the  "  horse  "  in  modern 
Greek,  like  deer  (the  German  thier,  "fera")  in  English,  and  emerc, 
which  originally  meant  "  to  take,"  came  to  be  restricted  to  the  sense 
of  "  buying.")  (2.)  Metaphor  is  a  very  common  cause  of  change  of 
signification.  (Thus  the  use  of  the  prepositions  has  been  transferred 
from  space  to  time.)  (3.)  The  meaning  of  a  word  will  vary  accord- 
ing to  its  application  to  persons  or  things  (as  in  the  adjective 
"beautiful,"  for  example),  to  what  is  good  or  bad  (whence  the 
change  in  meaning  in  silly  and  fortuna),  or  to  what  is  great  or 
small.     (4.)  Words,  again,  will  change  their  signification  according 


RELATION  TO  THE  OTHER  SCIENCES.      57 

to  one  group  of  languages  the  phonetic  rules  and 
possible  interchanges  of  letters  which  belong  to 
another.  The  last  error  is  a  fatal  one,  .but  is  not 
unfrequent  under  the  disguised  form  of  attributing 
a  phonetic  law  peculiar  to  a  special  language  to 
allied  dialects  or  the  common  parent  of  them  all. 
Thus,  because  Sanskrit  may  drop  an  initial  short 
a,  Pott  assumes,  in  his  theory  of  roots,  that  the 
primitive  Aryan  could  do  the  same  ;  and  the  Latin 
habit  of  changing  s  into  r  has  been  quoted  by  K. 

to  their  use  as  active  and  passive,  nominative  and  accusative.  (It 
is  of  some  consequence,  for  instance,  whether  we  use  venerandus  in 
reference  to  the  object  of  veneration  or  his  admirer.)  (5.)  It  makes 
a  considerable  difference  whether  an  idea  is  expressed  by  a  com- 
pound or  by  a  simple  word.  (Thus  the  Latin  nepos  is  the  French 
2~)etit-fils.  Collectives  imply  no  small  power  of  abstraction  ;  and  the 
fact  that  the  derivatives  of  Aryan  are  replaced  by  compounds  in 
Taic  shows  not  only  the  mental  superiority  of  the  former,  but 
also  the  fundamental  contrast  between  their  respective  modes  of 
thought.)  (6.)  The  same  word  may  be  differently  applied,  and  this 
relativity  of  meaning  has  important  consequences.  Hence  come 
the  idioms  which  form  the  characteristic  feature  of  a  dialect  or 
language,  and  make  a  literal  or  exact  translation  impossible.  (Com- 
pare the  variety  of  senses  in  which  the  word  "heart"  is  used.) 
(7.)  (a)  Though  change  of  pronunciation  may  cause  no  change 
of  meaning,  the  converse  is  often  the  case.  (/3)  Words  or  parts  of 
words  get  lost,  necessitating  the  introduction  of  new  ones  with 
a  more  or  less  varying  signification.  (So  equus,  in  the  Romance 
languages  has  been  replaced  by  caballus.)  (7)  The  vocabulary,  and 
therewith  the  stock  of  ideas,  may  be  increased  by  new  formatives 
or  loan-words,  which  bring  about  slight  changes  of  meaning  in  old 
words.  To  these  seven  causes  of  change  may  be  added  an  eighth, 
that  of  ignorance  or  false  analogy,  of  which  more  will  be  said  in 
the  ninth  chapter.  Cases  like  that  of  impertinent,  which  has  almost 
lost  its  original  sense,  will  best  fall  under  Pott's  third  class. 


58  SPHERE  OF  COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY. 

0.  Miiller  and  others  to  support  an  extraction  of 
irekaayol  in  Greek  out  of  irekapyol  (from  TreXco 
and  apyo?  =  aypos.  ) 

In  conclusion,  a  few  words  must  be  said  about 
the  name  of  the  science  with  which  we  are  con- 
cerned. u  Comparative  Philology"  is  at  once 
long  and  misleading ;  it  perpetuates  the  idea  that 
its  subject-matter  belongs  to  a  higher  and  more 
comprehensive  philology.  Apart  from  Compara- 
tive Philology,  however,  there  can  be  no  scientific 
study  of  articulate  language ;  and  if  philology 
means  something  other  than  this,  it  would  be 
absurd  to  rank  the  scientific  under  the  unscientific. 
But  this  is  what  is  popularly  done — philology  sig- 
nifying sometimes  a  dilettante  acquaintance  with 
the  canons  of  taste  and  polite  literature,  and,  in  fact, 
with  everything  that  is  not  the  science  of  language  ; 
sometimes  classical  scholarship,  in  which  the  cor- 
rection of  a  MS.,  or  the  close  imitation  of  an 
Augustan  writer,  is  the  highest  result  aimed  at. 
Now  these  are  all  very  good  things  in  their  way ; 
but  it  cannot  too  often  be  repeated  that  they  have 
nothing  in  common  with  Comparative  Philology. 
Classical  scholarship  may,  indeed,  contribute  much 

1  Fischel,  in  Kuhn's  Zeitschrift  (vol.  xx.  p.  369,  1872),  seems  to 
be  right  in  explaining  ireXaayol  from  the  roots  which  we  find  in 
Sanskrit  par  am,  Greek  irtpav  (irepdu,  Sec),  and  ya,  el/xi.  The  Pclas- 
gians  will  be  simply  the  "emigrants,"  like  the  Ionians  ( Idyoues, 
Yavancu)  from  ya  {=  "i-re"). 


RELATION  TO  THE  OTHER  SCIENCES.  59 

valuable  material  to  the  science,  so  far  at  least  as 
Latin  and  Greek  are  concerned ;  but  even  here 
its  supposed  discoveries  often  turn  out  to  be  erro- 
neous when  investigated  by  the  light  of  the  com- 
parative method,  and  can  seldom  be  received  with- 
out further  examination,  unless  the  facts  are  very 
plain  and  self-evident.  The  particular  can  only 
be  understood  in  the  light  of  the  universal ;  and 
the  empirical  rules  derived  from  a  careful  com- 
parative study  of  some  special  language,  indispen- 
sable as  such  data  are  to  the  scientific  philologist, 
are  still  narrow,  unexplained,  and  questionable. 
TVe  are  often  told  that  a  comparative  philologist 
must  be  thoroughly  acquainted  with  some  of  the 
principal  languages  with  which  he  deals,  other- 
wise the  inner  structure  of  the  language  will  be 
concealed  from  him,  and  he  will  be  obliged  to 
take  his  facts  at  second-hand,  and  thus  be  often 
led  into  error.  This  is  quite  true ;  and  the  more 
numerous  the  typical  languages  that  are  thoroughly 
known,  the  better  and  more  accurate  will  be  the 
work  of  the  scientific  student.  But  it  must  be 
remembered,  firstly,  that  if  a  specialist  takes  up 
Comparative  Philology  as  a  merely  subsidiary 
matter,  the  minor  details  of  his  specialty,  whether 
it  be  Greek,  or  Sanskrit,  or  Hebrew,  will  assume 
an  unreal  importance  in  his  eyes,  and  the  main 
phenomena    be    correspondingly    dwarfed ;     and, 


60  SPHERE  OF  COMPARATIVE  PHILOLOGY. 

secondly,  that  it  is  impossible  for  the  student  to 
have  anything  like  a  close  acquaintance  with  the 
large  number  of  languages  with  which  he  is 
obliged  to  deal.  As  in  the  other  sciences,  so  here  ; 
division  of  labour  is  imperatively  required,  and 
much  of  the  material  has  to  be  received  on  trust. 
Where  this  is  done  cautiously  and  scientifically, 
where  the  authorities  are  critically  chosen  and 
weighed,  and  where  the  comparison  of  facts  is 
large  and  wide-reaching,  the  chances  of  error  are 
minimised,  and  the  single  wrong  fact  is  neutral- 
ised by  the  many  accurate  ones.  We  do  not  re- 
quire a  linguist,  but  a  philologist  in  the  true  sense 
of  the  word.  As  this  sense,  however,  is  unfortu- 
nately misunderstood,  I  should  prefer  to  use  the 
term  Glottologist,  and  in  the  rest  of  these  chapters 
I  shall  speak  of  Glottology  rather  than  of  Com- 
parative Philology.  Glottology  will  be  the  science 
of  language  which  compares  and  classifies  words 
and  forms,  and  so  arrives  at  the  empirical  and 
finally  the  primary  laws  which  govern  the  develop- 
ment of  speech  and  its  varieties.  The  laws  will 
be  verified  by  an  appeal  to  history,  to  psychology, 
to  physiology,  to  ethnology ;  and  inasmuch  as 
words  are  but  uttered  thought,  and  language  the 
reflection  of  society,  the  results  of  the  science  and 
the  application  of  the  laws  we  have  discovered 
will  be  to  reconstruct  the  past  history  of  man  and 


RELATION  TO  THE  OTHER  SCIENCES.      61 

to  determine  the  character  of  those  long-forgotten 
strata  of  society  which  our  fossil-like  records  reveal 
to  us.1  We  shall  thus  be  enabled  to  trace  the 
gradual  growth  of  the  mind  of  man,  whether  dis- 
played in  the  creation  of  language  generally  as  an 
instrument  of  intercommunication  and  the  embodi- 
ment of  the  conception  of  the  relations  between 
thought  and  the  world,  or  in  the  triumph  of  the 
will  over  the  mechanism  of  the  bodily  organs  and 
the  limitations  imposed  in  turn  by  them  upon  it, 
or  lastly,  in  the  evolution  of  the  religious  idea — 
in  other  words,  in  Comparative  Mythology  and  the 
Science  of  Religions. 

1  For  an  example  of  the  way  in  which  forgotten  epochs  and  facts 
of  history  can  be  thus  restored,  see  Appendix.  Mangold  (in  Curtius' 
Studien,  vi.  2),  by  tracing  drj/j-os  to  the  root  da,  "to  divide"  (Sansk. 
day,  da),  has  shown  that  private  property  in  Attica  (and  elsewhere 
in  Greece)  originated  in  the  allotment  of  land  by  the  commune, 
which  still  prevails  among  the  Slaves,  and  has  been  made  familiar 
to  us  by  Sir  Henry  Maine. 


L]  B  R  A  R  V 

l   X  I  V  K  KSITY    OF 

i    \  [A. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE  IDOLA  OF  GLOTTOLOGY — THE  LAWS  OF  THE  SCIENCE 
DETERMINED  FROM  THE  ARYAN  FAMILY  ALONE. 

In  every  science  we  must  advance  from  the  known 
to  the  unknown.  This  can  only  be  done  by  the 
aid  of  hypotheses.  These  bridge  over  the  gulf, 
and  are,  as  it  were,  so  many  imaginary  circles, 
half  of  which  is  filled  up  by  facts  already  knowD, 
while  the  remaining  half  is  a  purely  mental  con- 
ception, which  will,  however,  turn  out  to  corre- 
spond with  objective  phenomena  should  the  hypo- 
theses prove  correct.  The  younger  the  science, 
the  smaller  w7ill  be  the  amount  of  known  facts, 
and  therefore  the  greater  the  number  of  hypo- 
theses required.  Now,  in  so  far  as  these  are  the 
product  of  the  imagination,  it  is  clear  that  wide 
scope  is  given  for  subjective  prejudices,  false  ana- 
logies, and  a  distorted  view  of  the  evidence.  This 
tendency  to  error  will  increase  with  the  increased 
meagreness  of  the  facts,  and  can  only  be  checked 
by  enlarged  knowledge  and  a  critical  comparison 
of  the  theory  with  what  is  actually  known.     Hence 


THE  IDOLA  OF  GLOTTOLOGY.  63 

as  a  science  grows  older,  its  ascertained  laws  be- 
come more  numerous,  its  provisional  hypotheses 
either  passing  into  laws  by  a  process  of  verifica- 
tion, or  being  thrown  aside  for  something  that 
will  better  stand  the  test  of  facts.  Even  dis- 
carded hypotheses,  however,  have  done  a  good 
work.  In  so  far  as  they  had  any  facts  to  support 
them,  they  helped  to  unify  a  string  of  isolated 
phenomena,  and  to  set  the  student  on  a  definite 
path  of  research.  We  cannot  collect  facts  to  any 
solid  purpose,  or  compare  them  afterwards,  with- 
out having  some  theory  to  guide  us  in  our  selec- 
tion. But  good  care  must  be  taken  to  place  all 
such  hypotheses  upon  their  proper  footing,  to  re- 
member their  provisional  character,  and  to  com- 
pare them  again  and  again  with  the  phenomena 
that  come  before  us.  Too  often  they  become 
unverified  assumptions,  which  we  accept  without 
questioning,  and  thus  exalt  into  scientific  laws, 
thereby  vitiating  our  further  investigations,  and 
falling  into  numberless  false  conclusions.  In  this 
way  what  were  intended  to  be  mental  landmarks 
become  what  Bacon  expressively  called  Idola, 
empty  assumptions  and  misconceptions,  which 
take  the  place  of  the  true  conceptions  that  cor- 
respond with  the  order  of  existing  things.  Glot- 
tology,  I  think,  like  all  other  new  studies,  will  be 
found   to   offer  a  plentiful  crop  of  these    idola. 


64  THE  IDOLA  OF  GLOTTOLOGY. 

Partly  the  science  is  still  overshadowed  by  the 
false  associations  connected  with  the  word  Philo- 
logy, to  which  I  alluded  in  the  last  chapter ; 
partly  the  interest  of  special  portions  of  the  science 
— phonology,  for  example — are  allowed  to  obscure 
the  several  interests  of  the  whole  ;  partly  it  has 
been  forgotten  how  large  is  the  mass  of  materials, 
and  consequently  the  results  obtained  in  one  de- 
partment have  been  supposed  to  be  of  universal 
application ;  partly  opinions  which  were  necessi- 
tated by  the  only  evidence  available  when  the 
science  was  in  its  infancy  have  been  adopted 
without  criticism,  and  regarded  as  so  many  first 
principles  which  no  one  would  dream  of  disput- 
ing. It  is  time,  however,  that  such  questions 
should  be  fully  discussed.  We  have  now  become 
accustomed  to  the  idea  of  applying  the  scientific 
method  to  language  ;  a  large  body  of  classified 
facts  has  been  brought  before  our  notice,  which 
is  being  increased  every  day,  and  the  sister 
sciences  of  ethnology,  prehistoric  archaeology,  and 
comparative  law,  not  to  speak  of  psychological 
and  physiological  discoveries,  are  ever  throwing 
fresh  light  upon  the  problems  of  Glottology,  and 
assisting  us  to  verify  the  conclusions  to  which  it 
comes.  Hence  we  are  in  a  position  to  examine 
anew  the  foundations  of  the  science,  and  to  deter- 
mine what  are  to  be  accepted  as  really  the  prin- 


THE  IDOLA  OF  GLOTTOLOGY.  65 

ciples  of  Comparative  Philology,  and  what  is  of 
doubtful  authority  or  altogether  erroneous. 

One  of  the  first  assumptions  of  the  glottologist, 
either  openly  avowed  or  unconsciously  implied, 
is  that  a  scientific  investigation  of  the  Aryan 
family  alone  will  give  a  full  and  complete  solution 
of  all  the  problems  of  the  science  of  language, 
helped  out  perhaps  by  a  few  illustrations  from 
non-Aryan   dialects.1      The    causes    of    such    an 

1  Mr  Alexander  J.  Ellis,  in  his  address  to  the  London  Philolo- 
gical Society,  1873  (p.  12),  says,  "  Education  in  English  schools 
was  contrived  when  I  was  a  boy — and  though  somewhat  improved, 
I  am  glad  to  think,  during  the  intervening  forty  years,  yet,  like 
the  tree,  it  preserves  its  old  bend,  and  may  therefore  be  regarded 
as  contrived,  undesignedly,  of  course,  and  perhaps  unconsciously 
(which  makes  amendment  not  particularly  hopeful) — to  bring  up  a 
boy's  mind  in  the  one  Aryan  faith  of  the  one  Aryan  linguistic 
mode  of  thought.  The  instrument  was  mainly  the  Latin  grammar, 
to  which  even  all  other  Aryan  heresies  were  made  to  succumb. 
Boswell  reports  a  speech  of  Johnson  which  puts  the  feeling  thus 
generated  in  a  very  strong  light.  '  I  always  said,'  quoth  the  oracle, 
'  Shakespeare  had  Latin  enough  to  grammaticise  his  English  '  (anno 
1780,  set.  71).  We  know  now  what  to  conclude  of  Johnson's  own 
knowledge  of  English  grammar.  Latin  and  Greek  eternally 
ground  in,  with  French  as  an  'extra,'  and  English  merely  as  a 
medium  for  '  construing,'  is  the  received  English  preparation  for 
linguistic  study.  Wei],  we  have  got  out  of  it  a  little.  Thanks  to 
Christianity,  some  people  had  to  learn  Hebrew,  and  the  Semitic 
verb  at  least  ought  to  have  opened  our  eyes.  But  if  any  philologist 
wishes  to  see  how  truly  all  Aryanism  and  Semiticism  are  merely 
the  favoured  literary  dialects  of  the  world,  how  extremely  remote 
they  are  from  representing  all  logical  connections  of  thought,  to 
indicate  which  inflections  and  insertions,  reduplication,  guna,  and 
umlaut  and  ablaut,  conjugational  forms  and  voices,  and  the  other 
paraphernalia  developed  by  these  systems  of  language  in  different 

E 


66  THE  IDOLA  OF  GLOTTOLOGT. 

assumption  lie  upon  the  surface.  Not  only  did 
Comparative  Philology  begin  with  the  Aryan 
family  ;  not  only  are  its  students  members  for  the 
most  part  of  that  family,  and  best  and  primarily 
acquainted  with  some  one  or  more  of  its  dialects  ; 
not  only  does  the  historical  position  of  Europe 
give  to  this  group  of  languages  an  immediate  and 
practical  interest;  but  still  more  it  is  here  that 
the  facts  of  language  are  most  numerous,  and  its 
vicissitudes  most  accurately  known,  from  the  old- 
est hymns  of  the  Big- Veda  down  to  the  newspaper 
of  to-day.  "When  the  great  discovery  of  the  affini- 
ties of  this  group  dawned  upon  Schlegel  and 
Bopp,  and  the  commonest  inflections  of  grammar 
were  traced  from  dialect  to  dialect  and  from  cen- 
tury to  century,  it  was  impossible  not  to  believe 
that  what  held  good  of  the  Aryan  would  hold 
equally  good  of  all  other  tongues.  "We  can 
only  work  by  means  of  analogy,  and  there 
seemed  no  reason  for  supposing  that  the  phe- 
nomena would  differ  in  the  two  cases.  Moreover, 
there  was  the  continual  striving  of  the  human 
mind  after  unity,  which  would  tend  towards  the 

proportions,  are  supposed  to  have  been  constructed,  in  ways  which 
different  scholars  have  wanted  words  laudatory  enough  to  charac- 
terise ;  if  any  philologist  wishes  to  see  radicarianism  and  hereditary 
preservation  of  forms  of  words  break  utterly  down,  and  find  a  sys- 
tem of  language  which  preserves  its  individuality  by  its  mere  mode 
of  grammatical  construction,  let  him  study  the  Basque." 


THE  IDOLA  OF  GLOTTOLOGY.  67 

belief,  unless  disproved  by  fact,  that  all  languages 
have  radiated  from  a  single  centre  ;  and  tradition 
and  religious  prepossessions  had  fixed  that  centre 
in  the  East.     In  the  enthusiasm  of  a  new  discovery, 
bewildered  by  the  vagueness  of  Indian  chronology, 
it  was  hard  not  to  fancy  that  the  primeval  lan- 
guage had  been  found  in  Sanskrit,  or  at  least  in 
the  parent  Indo-European  speech.      It  is  to  this 
that   we   must   ascribe    the   attempt  of  Bopp    to 
attach  the  Polynesian  idioms  to  the  Aryan  family. 
Already  the  world  had  been  accustomed  to  derive 
all  the  languages  of  the  earth  from  some  common 
ancestor,  whether  that  were  Hebrew  as  orthodoxy 
ruled,  or  Basque  with  Erro,  or  Dutch  with  Goro- 
pius.     It  was  the   Christian    spirit  that  saw  the 
same  blood,  the  same  origin,  and  the  same  hope 
in  all  men,  in  contradistinction  to  the  pagan  spirit 
of  classical  antiquity,  which  localised  its  gods  and 
its  institutions,  and   could  discover  in  a  foreign 
language    nothing    but    a    " barbarous"   jargon. 
Everything  seemed  to  favour  the  belief  that  the 
new  science  had  made  its  way  back  to  the  sources 
of  all  living  speech,  or,  at  all  events,  to  something 
very  near  those  sources,  at  a  single  leap.     Every 
day  brought  fresh  proofs  of  the  close  affinities  of 
Greek  and  Sanskrit,  of  Latin  and  Gaelic  ;  while, 
on  the  other  hand,  it  became  increasingly  evident 
that  many  of  the  inflections,  the  origin  of  which 


68  THE  IDOLA  OF  GLOTIOLOGY. 

bad  hitherto  been  ascribed  to  nature  or  convention, 
had  primitively  been  independent  words.  Was  it 
not  clear,  then,  that  Aryan  speech  itself  had  once 
been  in  a  condition  similar  to  Turkish,  if  not  to 
Chinese?  Here,  therefore,  the  common  starting- 
point  of  all  languages  had  at  last  been  reached, 
that  plain  of  Shinar  which  ended  in  its  Babel  of 
confusion.  The  idea  was  strengthened  by  the  fos- 
silised antiquity  of  the  Chinese  Empire  itself;  it 
was  like  some  pterodactyl  or  ichthyosaurus  hap- 
pily preserved  in  the  rocks  to  tell  us  the  character 
of  animal  life  in  the  liassic  period.  Accordingly  it 
was  assumed  without  further  debate  that  the  Aryan 
group  of  languages  was  the  model  of  every  other  ; 
either  they  were  all  descended  from  a  common 
source,  or,  at  any  rate,  were  subject  to  identical 
laws.  Philology  could  offer  no  difficulty  which  a 
fuller  knowledge  of  Aryan  would  not  solve. 
Where,  for  example,  was  an  explanation  of  the 
Etruscan  inscriptions  to  be  found  ?  In  some  Aryan 
dialect,  of  course.1     What  was  the  original  form 

1  So  far  as  Etruscan  is  concerned,  the  influence  of  the  belief  still 
seems  dominant.  I  will  say  nothing  of  the  Earl  of  Crawford's  book, 
in  which  the  key  to  the  inscriptions  is  discovered  in  German,  in 
rivalry  of  Dr  Donaldson,  but  confessedly  without  any  knowledge  of 
Philology.  But  even  that  splendid  monument  of  German  patience 
and  industry,  the  first  volume  of  Corssen's  work,  "  Ueber  die  Sprache 
der  Etrusker  "  (1S74),  in  which  he  has  collected  and  classified 
every  scrap  of  inscription  yet  discovered,  is  another  illustration  of 
the  distorting  effect  of  special  studies,  even  though  carried  on  iu  a 


THE  IDOLA  OF  GLOTTOLOGY.  69 

of  all  articulate  speech  ?  The  verbal  monosyllables 
to  which  the  Sanskrit  grammarians  had  reduced 
the  lexicon.  How  was  the  idea  of  action  first 
expressed  ?  By  attaching  a  pronoun  to  one  of 
these  verbal  roots.  These  and  suchlike  were  the 
answers  readily  given  to  the  inquirer ;  and  time 
was  needed  to  learn  that  the  inner  mysteries  of 
a  science  cannot  be  so  easily  penetrated ;  that  it 
is  not  the  first  solution  that  comes  to  hand  which 
is  necessarily  the  true  one;  but  that  the  truth  is 
only  to  be  gained  by  slow  degrees,  by  the  labours 
of  many  students,  and  by  the  orderly  succession 
of  hypothesis  after  hypothesis,  until  the  right  one 
is  at  length  hit  upon.  We  are  still  too  far  from 
seeing  this.  We  inherit  the  opinions  and  idola 
of  our  predecessors  along  with  their  method,  and 
it  requires  an  effort  to  criticise  what  has  been  con- 
purely  scientific  spirit.  In  defiance  of  physiology  and  ethnology, 
an  attempt  is  made  to  explain  Etruscan  as  an  Italic  dialect.  But  a 
study  of  the  book  has  convinced  me  that,  whatever  Etruscan 
might  be,  it  was  certainly  not  an  Italic  dialect,  and  Aufrecht's 
criticism,  as  embodied  in  papers  read  before  the  Philological 
Society  of  London,  will  make  it  clear  that  the  key  of  the  Etruscan 
problem  has  not  yet  been  found.  Aryan  words  certainly  exist  in 
the  Etruscan  inscriptions,  but  they  were  borrowed  ;  the  list  of 
Etruscan  numerals  given  by  Corssen  consists  of  the  Roman  proper 
nouns  "  Quartus,"  "  Octavus,"  &c.  ;  and  a  perusal  of  the  inscriptions 
quoted  by  the  great  German  philologist  himself  shows  plainly  that 
the  words  found  on  the  famous  dice  of  Toscanella  are  really  numerals. 
(See  the  cogent  criticism  of  Deecke  :  "  Corssen  und  die  Sprache 
der  Etrusker,"  1875.) 


70  THE  IDOLA  OF  GLOTTOLOGY. 

secrated  by  great  names,  and  has  become  part  and 
parcel  of  our  belief.  Above  all,  the  glottologist 
has  still  to  be  trained  for  his  work  in  the  Aryan 
family.  Here  alone  are  the  materials  sufficiently 
large,  clear,  and  certain ;  here  alone  have  we  the 
immense  advantages  offered  by  a  preparatory 
knowledge  of  some  of  the  lanoruao-es  to  be  studied, 
and  by  the  possession  of  monuments  at  once  so 
old  and  so  perfect  as  the  Rig- Veda ;  and  here 
alone  have  the  facts  been  classified,  their  conclu- 
sions drawn  out  in  their  full  extent,  and  the 
whole  brought  into  scientific  shape.  The  Semitic 
family  is  at  once  too  small  and  too  compact ;  its 
branches  do  not  differ  more  anions:  themselves 
than  do  the  Romance  languages  in  Europe ;  and 
until  its  Sanskrit  has  been  found,  as  it  may  yet 
be  in  the  old  Egyptian  or  the  sub- Semitic  idioms 
of  Africa,  we  cannot  get  back  beyond  a  parent 
speech  which  is  philologically  late,  and  which  fails 
to  offer  that  facility  for  comparison  which  is 
needed  by  the  young  glottologist.  As  for  the 
other  languages  of  the  world,  they  are  still,  for  the 
most  part,  awaiting  their  Bopp.  Something  has 
been  done  for  the  Ural-Altaic  or  Turanian  family, 
which  embraces  Finnic,  Tataric,  and  Mongolian, 
especially  by  Schott,  and  the  cuneiform  records 
from  Babylonia  and  Susiana  are  likely  to  lead  to 
important  results  by  revealing  the  character  of  this 


THE  IDOLA  OF  GLOTTOLOGY.  71 

group  of  tongues  at  an  early  date.1  Bleek,  too, 
has  worked  at  the  Ba-ntu  of  South  Africa,2  and 
Chinese  has  been  more  and  more  attracting  atten- 
tion to  itself.  As  yet,  however,  but  little  has  been 
-done  outside  Aryan  beyond  the  determination  of  the 
most  general  conclusions,  and  much  of  that  little 
will  probably  have  to  be  revised.  Consequently, 
just  as  Latin  and  Greek  are  still  the  basis  of 
popular  education,  it  is  in  the  Aryan  family  that 
the  glottologist  will  have  to  receive  his  training 
for  some  time  to  come.  Hence,  when  he  begins 
to  deal  with  other  classes  of  languages  his  mind 
is  filled  with  certain  prepossessions  and  beliefs, 
which  are  likely  to  colour  his  researches  more  or 
less.      He  naturally  expects  to  find  the  same  phe- 

1  Those  who  wish  to  gain  some  insight  into  the  oldest  Turanian 
grammar  attainable  cannot  do  better  than  read  M.  Lenormant's 
admirably  arranged  "  Etudes  Accadiennes  "  (1873),  in  his  series  of 
"  Lettres  Assyriologiques."  The  fact  that  the  Accadian  language 
is  written  in  characters  (originally  hieroglyphic)  of  native  origin 
adds  immensly  to  its  value.  I  have  attempted  to  compare  it  with 
other  Turanian  idioms  in  an  article  in  the  Journal  of  Philology, 
vol.  iii.  No.  5  (1870).  The  Accadai,  or  "  Highlanders,"  descended 
from  the  mountains  of  Elam  into  the  plains  of  Babylonia,  and 
established  their  power  there  ;  and  the  name  "  Accadian  "  has  been 
given  to  the  language  in  default  of  a  better.  For  the  cognate 
idioms  of  Susiana,  see  my  paper  on  "  The  Languages  of  the  Cunei- 
form Inscriptions  of  Elam  and  Media,"  in  the  Transactions  of  the 
Society  of  Biblical  Archaeology,  vol.  iii.  part  1  (1874). 

2  See  his  admirable  "  Comparative  Grammar  of  the  South 
African  Languages  "  (1862-69). 


72  THE  IDOLA  OF  GLOTTOLOGY. 

nomena  and  obtain  the  same  results  in  his  new 
field  of  inquiry  as  those  with  which  he  is  already 
familiar.  It  is  only  after  considerable  experience 
that  he  comes  to  see  that  the  Aryan  family  is  but 
one  out  of  many,  and  that  in  several  respects  its 
character  is  altogether  exceptional.  The  languages 
of  civilisation  are  not  numerous.  The  case  is  still 
worse  if  the  student  be  unacquainted  with  any  non- 
Aryan  dialect,  or,  at  all  events,  only  uses  these  to 
illustrate  the  views  he  already  holds.  Unfortu- 
nately this  is  what  is  only  too  common.  Glotto- 
logy  has  for  the  most  part  been  confined  to  Aryan 
scholars,  and  consequently  the  laws  they  have 
formulated,  however  true  they  may  be  of  the 
Aryan  group  itself,  are  not  necessarily  of  universal 
validity. 

Then,  again,  these  laws  are  not  always  obtaiued 
from  a  survey  even  of  the  whole  Aryan  family. 
The  modern  languages  of  Europe,  whether  Ro- 
mance or  Teutonic,  afford  us  the  most  numerous 
and  the  most  certain  data  for  our  studies  that  we 
can  find.  It  is  these,  moreover,  that  furnish  us 
with  the  best  means  of  verifying  our  theories. 
They  have,  therefore,  especially  attracted  the 
notice  of  glottologists,  and  some  of  the  most  valu- 
able results  of  the  science  have  been  gained  from 
them.  But  it  must  never  be  forgotten  that  the 
phenomena    they    present   are    in    large  measure 


THE  IDOLA  OF  GLOTTOLOGY.  73 

unlike  any  that  have  ever  occurred  before  through- 
out the  history  of  language.  As  we  saw  in  the 
last  chapter,  the  subject-matter  of  an  historical 
science  is  continually  incorporating  fresh  elements 
with  the  process  of  time,  like  some  organic  growth  ; 
and  this  is  particularly  the  case  with  the  languages 
we  are  now  considering.  These  modern  dialects 
have  grown  up  in  the  midst  of  literature,  and  of 
the  influences  inspired  by  the  Roman  Empire  and 
the  Christian  Church.  The  latter  worked  on  the 
side  both  of  law  and  of  religion — the  most  potent 
influences  to  which  society  is  open — and  thus  not 
only  filled  the  vocabulary  even  of  Teutonic  tribes 
with  Latin  and  Greek  terms,  but  perpetuated  a 
popular  knowledge  of  the  Latin  tongue  itself,  and 
gave  a  Latin  shape  to  the  expression  of  popular 
thought.  Literature  kept  up  an  artificial  standard 
of  linguistic  purity  and  excellence,  and  to  some 
extent  prevented  the  natural  progress  of  phonetic 
decay  and  the  rank  growth  of  dialects.  Shake- 
speare and  the  Bible  have  stereotyped  English  not 
less  than  Dante  has  determined  classical  Italian,  or 
than  the  railway,  the  telegraph,  and  the  daily  press 
will  arrest  the  further  development  of  European 
speech. 

These  considerations  will  explain  how  it  has 
come  to  pass  that  eminent  philologists  have  com- 
mitted themselves  to  general  theories  which  will 


74  THE  IDOLA  OF  GLOTTOLOGY. 

not  bear  a  very  close  examination.  Every  one  can 
see  the  absurdity  of  supposing  that  the  history  of 
the  Aryan  family  faithfully  represents  in  all  parti- 
culars the  history  of  all  other  families  of  speech  or 
of  language  generally.  No  one,  for  example,  would 
argue  that  all  civilised  languages  must  be  inflec- 
tional ;  but  when  the  opinion  is  not  stated  in  this 
broad  way,  it  is  very  liable  to  escape  notice,  and 
to  be  unconsciously  assumed  and  acted  upon.  I 
shall  give  two  or  three  instances  of  this,  in  which 
theories  have  been  put  forward,  and  are  still  com- 
monly held,  which  rest  entirely  upon  the  above 
assumption.  No  canon  is  so  often  laid  down  by 
glottologists  as  that  the  roots  of  all  languages  are 
monosyllabic.  And  yet  this  assertion  rests  simply 
upon  the  fact  that  such  is  the  case  in  the  Aryan 
family.  It  is  true  that  Chinese  may  sometimes  be 
called  in  to  corroborate,  or  rather  to  illustrate,  this 
belief;  but  then  we  are  too  little  acquainted  with 
the  primitive  form  of  Chinese  to  say  what  was  the 
original  nature  of  its  radicals.  And  indeed,  so  far 
from  confirming  the  canon,  the  present  character 
of  Chinese  would  rather  tell  against  it,  seems:  that 
the  tendency  of  all  languages  is  towards  phonetic 
decay  and  the  loss  of  syllables ;  while  Mr  Edkins 
would  lead  us  to  infer  that  the  existence  of  lonsrer 

o 

roots  can  still  be  detected  in  the  living  language.1 

1  Thus  aloug  the  southern  bank  of  the  Yang-tsi-kiaug,  and  through 


THE  IDOLA  OF  GLOTTOLOGY.  75 

The  recovery  of  Accaclian  from  the  cuneiform  re- 
cords of  Babylonia — the  importance  of  which,  for 
philological  purposes,  will  make  me  often  refer  to 
it — enables  us  to  go  back  to  a  very  remote  period 
of  Turanian  speech ;  and  here,  though  the  majo- 
rity of  roots  are  monosyllabic,  dissyllables  like 
clugud,  "heavy,"  gusur,  "wood,"  are  by  no  means 
unfrequent;  and  not  only  are  there  no  data  for 
reducing  them  to  monosyllables,  but  their  obed- 
ience to  the  law  of  vocal  harmony  would  seem 
absolutely  to  prevent  such  an  analysis.  Bleek's 
investigations,  again,  into  the  Ba-ntu  of  South 
Africa  have  led  him  to  the  belief  that  polysyllabic 
roots  are  rather  the  rule  than  the  exception,  many 
combinations  of  sounds  which  seem  to  us  most 
difficult  being  really  the  most  primitive,  while 
mimetic  roots — those,  for  instance,  which  denote 
sneezing — would  most  naturally  take  a  dissyllabic 
form.1  These  few  facts  are  sufficient  to  show  the 
worth  of  the  attempt  made  to  pare  down  the  Semi- 
tic radicals  to  monosyllables  in  accordance  with 
the  supposed  law  of  monosyllabic  roots.     The  task 

Chekiang  to  Fuh-kien,  the  old  initials  are  all  preserved,  while  in 
the  northern  provinces  no  less  than  three  finals  have  heen  lost. 

1  Bohtlingk  says  ("  Ueber  die  Sprache  der  Yakuten,"  p.  xvii.  note), 
"  The  commonly  assumed  view,  that  the  words  of  a  monosyllabic 
language  are  all  roots,  has  little  to  say  for  itself.  In  Tibetan  it  can 
be  shown  that  several  words,  which  now  seem  monosyllabic,  have 
grown  out  of  a  combination  of  two  words." 


76  THE  IDOLA  OF  GLOTTOLOGY. 

is  a  hard  one ;  and  the  disagreement  among  the 
man}'  eminent  scholars  who  have  tried  it  as  to  the 
way  in  which  the  desired  result  is  to  be  secured, 
would  of  itself  indicate  the  worthlessness  of  the 
whole  proceeding.  One  would  slice  off  a  letter  at 
the  end  of  the  word,  another  in  the  middle,  an- 
other at  the  beginning,  while  a  fourth,  with  an 
arbitrary  eclecticism,  would  cut  out  letters  in  all 
three   places   according    to  his   fancy.1     No    one, 

1  The  last  and  by  far  the  most  scientific  endeavour  to  compare 
the  Semitic  and  Aryan  families,  and  to  reduce  Semitic  roots  to 
monosyllables,  is  Friedrich  Delitzsch's,  "  Studien  iiber  Indoger- 
manisch-semitische  Wurzelverwandschaft  "  (1S73).  The  most  valu- 
able part  of  the  work  is  a  review  and  criticism  of  his  predecessors, 
from  Guicbard(1606),  Thomassin  (1697),  and  De  Gebelin  (1774),  to 
Ascoli,  Von  Raumer,  Gesenius,  Fiirst,  and  Franz  Delitzsch.  The 
author  bases  his  researches  upon  the  fact  that  Indo-European 
roots  may  contain  more  than  two  consonants,  while  many  Semitic 
roots  seem  to  have  only  two,  or  even  one.  But  he  forgets  to  inquire 
what  is  the  general  and  distinguishing  character  of  the  radicals  in 
the  two  families.  The  fatal  objection  to  his  labours  is,  however, 
that  he  has  begun  them  at  the  wrong  end.  If  Aryan  and  Semitic 
are  to  be  compared,  we  must  commence  with  the  structure  and  the 
grammar,  not  with  the  lexicon.  Moreover,  Assyrian  and  old  Egyp- 
tian are  deliberately  ignored — indispensable  as  they  would  seem  to 
be  if  we  would  find  the  oldest  obtainable  forms  of  the  radicals  ; 
and  the  roots  selected  for  comparison  are  all,  on  the  one  hand,  more 
or  less  of  an  onomatopoeic  nature;  and,  on  the  other  band,  contain 
three  consonants,  two  of  which  may  be  pronounced  together  with- 
out the  intervention  of  a  vowel.  Delitzsch  does  not  say  what  he 
would  do  with  a  root  like  ]tDp.  Minor  difficulties,  such  as  the  great 
importance  of  vowels  in  Semitic,  which  would  appear  to  be  incom- 
patible with  a  theory  in  which  the  vowels  necessarily  count  for 
little,  may  be  passed  over. 

Since  the  publication  of  this  work,  an  article  by  J.  Grill,  "On 


THE  IDOLA   OF  GLOTTOLOGY.  77 

however,  can  enter  into  the  spirit  of  the  Semitic 
languages  without  seeing  how  entirely  they  are 
built  upon  the  principle  of  triliteralism.  It  is 
implied  in  the  whole  theory  of  their  grammar;  and 
to  imagine  that  it  has  grown  out  of  something 
essentially  unlike,  is  to  admit  the  possibility  of  a 
change  of  mental  view,  which  is  inconsistent  with 
all  the  experiences  of  psychology.  Triliteralism  is 
not  the  invention  of  Jewish-Arabic  grammarians 
of  the  tenth  century ;  long  before  this,  it  was  re- 
cognised to  the    fullest  by  the  literati  of  Assur- 

the  Relation  of  the  Indogermanic  and  Semitic  Radicals,"  has  ap- 
peared in  the  J 'ournal  of  the  German  Oriental  Society,  vol.  xxvii.  part 
3.  It  contains  several  ingenious  suggestions,  and  well  contrasts  what 
the  author  calls  Indogermanic  Vocalism  and  Formalism  with  Se-  \ 
mitic  Consonantalism  and  Materialism.  As  regards  his  main  thesis, 
however,  the  writer  falls  behind  Delitzsch.  Semitic  triliteralism  is 
assumed  to  have  developed  out  of  a  more  primitive  stage  of  bili- 
teralism,  on  the  ground  that  "the  simpler  forms  of  the  root  come 
first,  the  more  complex  and  artificial  being  a  later  and  organically- 
developed  product  of  these."  "What  is  logically  first,  however,  is  by 
no  means  necessarily  historically  so  ;  and  the  modern  dialects  of  the 
lower  races  show  us,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  that  in  language  the  complex 
precedes  the  simple,  and  that  simplicity  and  unity  are  the  last 
result  of  reflection  and  culture.  "When  Grill  goes  on  to  assume  a 
prehistoric  isolating  stage  of  language,  which  lies  behind  the  Aryan 
and  Semitic  roots,  he  steps  beyond  the  data  of  philology,  and  calls 
in  the  aid  of  a  theory  which  will  be  controverted  in  a  later  chapter. 
He  lays  down,  moreover,  that  this  primeval  root-language  was  an 
"  alpha-speech,"  that  is,  one  in  which  a  was  the  only  vowel  known  ! 
Roots  like  i,  "to  go,"  show  how  little  this  view  is  supported  by  the 
Aryan  languages  ;  and  if,  as  Grill  admits,  Semitic  roots  take  no 
account  of  vowels,  it  is  difficult  to  understand  how  they  can  be  said 
to  presuppose  this  lost  and  vanished  root-vowel  a. 


78  THE  IDOLA  OF  GLOTTOLOGT. 

bani-pal,  the  son  of  Essar-haddon,  whose  lexical 
and  grammatical  tablets  are  now  in  the  British 
Museum ;  and  so  clearly  was  the  principle  felt  by 
the  people,  that  foreign  words  of  one  syllable, 
which  were  borrowed  by  the  Assyrians,  had  to  be 
Semitised  by  the  addition  of  a  consonant  or  semi- 
consonant.  The  so-called  biliterals  are  either  the 
result  of  phonetic  decay,  or  else,  as  I  think  we 
now  have  materials  for  proving,  were  loan-words.1 
The  concave  roots  were  really  of  triliteral  origin, 
and  are  primarily  used  as  triliterals  in  Assyrian, 
which  possesses  the  inestimable  advantage  of  a 
syllabary ;  while  such  few  compounds  as  really 
exist  go  back  to  triliteral  elements.  The  same 
holds  good  of  quadriliterals,  which  for  the  most 
part  have  extended  a  vowel  into  a  liquid ; 2  and 
the  occurrence  of  words  of  similar  meaning  which 
differ  in  having  letters  of  cognate  sound  merely 
shows  that  certain  letters  interchange,  not  that 
the  word  was  originally  triliteral.3     No  argument 

i  See  a  paper  of  mine  on  "  The  Origin  of  Semitic  Civilisation''  in 
the  Transactions  of  the  Society  of  Biblical  Archaeology,  vol.  i.  part  2 
(1872.. 

2  Thus  pt£^T  has  become  p'^,*2"Tl  in  1  Chron.  xviii.  5,  6,  as  in 
Syriac  ;  and  NDD  (Assyrian  cussu),  "throne,"  is  the  Arabic  curs' t/a, 
and  the  Aramaic  corsai.  See  my  "Assyrian  Grammar,"  p.  6.  Damas- 
cus is  Dimaska  in  Assyrian. 

3  In  many  cases  it  is  difficult  to  decide  whether  two  letters  really 
interchange,  and  the  two  parallel  roots  are  originally  due  to  dialectic 
differences,  or  whether  the  several  forms  have  sprung  from  the 


THE  IDOLA  OF  GLOTTOLOGY.  79 

can  be  drawn  from  old  Egyptian,  because,  what- 
ever may  be  the  relationship  of  the  grammar,  the 
bulk  of  the  lexicon  is  certainly  non-Semitic,  while 
those  few  archaic  words,  like  p'tafck,  "  to  open," 
and  klttam,  "  to  close,"  which  have  Semitic  ana- 
logues, are  triliteral.  This  is  one  example  of  the 
false  conclusions,  the  hasty  neglect  of  evidence, 
and  the  wasted  ingenuity  that  have  resulted  from 
the  attempt  to  apply  a  law  peculiar  to  Aryan  to 
other  families  of  speech. 

We  may  take  another  example  from  what  has 
been  called  the  doctrine  of  roots.  From  an  ana- 
lysis of  Aryan  it  has  been  inferred  that  all  roots 
were  originally  verbal.  This  is  certainly  the  case 
in  the  Indo-European  family,  so  far  as  our  facts 
allow  us  to  see  ;  and  it  seems  to  have  psychology 
in  its  favour.  Language  is  the  expression  of  \ 
thought,  but  it  is  equally  the  expression  of  will ; 
and  this  was  true  more  especially  at  first,  when  it 
was  used  in  the  service  of  the  primitive  wants  of 
mankind.  Now  will,  as  realised  in  action,  is 
essentially  of  a  verbal  character ;  hence  it  might 
be  supposed  that  the  verbal  nature  of  radicals  was 
a  fact  which  held  good  not  only  of  Aryan,  but  of 
all  other  human  languages.     Not  so,  however.     In 

same  mental  type,  which  was  never  itself  clothed  in  speech,  but 
constituted  a  kind  of  generative  centre  for  the  productive  energy  of 
early  language. 


80  THE  1DOLA  OF  GLOTTOLOGY. 

this  case  we  cannot  appeal  to  Turanian  ;  for  though 
Accadian  seems  to  have  nominal  as  well  as  verbal 
roots,  our  data  do  not  carry  us  back  to  their  ori- 
ginal content  and  meaning,  and  they  may  have 
been  a  confused  combination  of  nominal  and  verbal 
elements,  in  which  neither  of  the  two  had  the  pre- 
dominance. But,  like  the  idioms  of  Polynesia,  the 
Semitic  languages  refer  us  to  nominal  roots  as  decid- 
edly as  the  Aryan  do  to  verbal  ones.1  The  Semitic 
verb  presupposes  a  noun  just  as  much  as  the  con- 
verse is  the  case  in  Aryan.  Here,  then,  the  concep- 
tion of  the  object  lay  at  the  bottom  of  the  language — 
an  intuition  in  which  the  subject  ignored,  or  rather 
absorbed  into  the  object ;  subjective  action  and  the 
development  of  will  being  left  out  of  sight.  A 
similar  explanation  seems  necessary  in  regard  to 
idioms  that  have  few,  if  any,  abstract  general  terms, 
like  Tasmanian,  which  could  express  an  abstract 
idea  such  as  "  round,"  only  by  saying,  "  like  the 
moon,"  or  some  other  round  object.2     The  same 

1  What  was  the  original  content  and  purport  of  roots  is  not 
referred  to  here.  All  that  is  meant  is  the  conception  with  which 
Aryan  and  Semitic  grammar  consciously  started.  The  first  clearly 
defined  intuition  which  lies  at  the  back  of  Aryan  grammar  is  that 
of  the  verb,  while  the  growing  consciousness  of  the  Semite  fastened 
itself  upon  the  noun. 

-  Milligan,  "  Vocabulary  of  the  Dialects  of  some  of  the  Aboriginal 
Tribes  of  Tasmania,''  p.  34.  The  whole  passage  is  very  instructive. 
"  It  has  already  been  implied  that  the  aborigines  of  Tasmania  had 
acquired  very  limited  powers  of  abstraction  or  generalisation.     They 


THE  IDOLA  OF  GLOTTOLOGY.  81 

deficiency  of  abstract  terms,  that  is,  of  words  in 
which  the  subjective  predominates  over  the  objective 
element,  marks  manv  barbarous  languages.  The 
Malayans,  for  instance,  have  words  to  signify 
different  sorts  and  parts  of  trees,  but  none  to  signify 
"tree"  itself;  while  the  Algonquin  can  localise 
special  individual  acts  of  loving,  but  cannot  express 
the  act  regarded  in  the  abstract,  when  it  is  removed 
from  the  category  of  space  to  that  of  time — in 
other  words,  becomes  an  action  which  can  be  re- 
peated any  moment,  instead  of  being  a  definite 
objective  fact.1  Similarly  the  Cherokee  possesses 
thirteen  different  verbs  to  denote  particular  kinds 
of  "washing,"  but  none  to  denote  "washing  "  in 
a  general  sense.2     Perhaps  the  verbal  conception 


possessed  no  words  representing  abstract  ideas  ;  for  each  variety  of 
gum-tree  and  wattle-tree,  &c,  &c.,  they  had  a  name,  but  they  had  no 
equivalent  for  the  expression  '  a  tree  ;  '  neither  could  they  express 
abstract  qualities,  such  as  hard,  soft,  warm,  cold,  long,  short,  round, 
&c.  ;  for  'hard,'  they  would  say  'like  a  stone  ; '  for  'tall,'  they 
would  say  'long  legs,'  &c.  ;  for  '  round,'  they  said  'like  a  ball,' 
'  like  the  moon,'  and  so  on,  usually  suiting  the  action  to  the  word, 
and  confirming  by  some  sign  the  meaning  to  be  understood."  The 
latter  words  are  especially  noticeable,  bearing  as  they  do  upon  ges- 
ture-language, out  of  which  the  various  nuances  of  grammar  have 
been  developed. 

1  See  Du  Ponceau,  "Langues  de  l'Amerique,"  pp.  120,  200,  236, 
237.  The  same  holds  good  of  the  dialect  of  the  Hurons,  according 
to  Charlevoix,  quoted  by  Du  Ponceau,  p.  234. 

2  These  verbs  are  as  follows  : — kutuvco,  "  I  am  washing  myself ;" 
Iculestula.,  "  my  head  ;  "  tsestida,  u  another's  head  ;  "  kuhusquo,  "  my 
face;"   tsekusquo,   "another's   face;"   tdMsuld,    "my     hands;" 

F 


82  THE  IDOLA  OF  GLOTTOLOGY. 

upon  which  the  Aryan  languages  are  built  pointed 
out  from  the  beginning  the  active,  self-conscious, 
nature-subduing  character  of  the  Aryan  race,  just 
as  we  seem  to  trace  the  features  of  Judaism  in  the 
determinate  objective  Semitic  root  and  the  resig- 
nation of  the  subject  which  it  implies. 

The  last  example  of  the  Idolum,  or  rather  of  its 
effects,  which  I  shall  select,  is  the  expectation  of 
rinding  elsewhere  the  same  similarity  of  grammar, 
if  not  of  vocabulary,  that  exists  among  the  several 
members  of  the  Aryan  family.  But  the  striking 
unity  of  form  that  meets  us  in  this  family  is  really 
exceptional,  and  will  have  to  be  explained  here- 
after.    The  rule  is  rather   change  and    diversity.1 

tdtsey&sula,  "  another's  hands  ;  "  takosuld,  "  my  feet ;  "  tatseydsula , 
"  another's  feet  ;  "  tak&ngkald,  "  my  clothes  ;  "  tatscytingkeld, 
"another's  clothes;"  takilteyd,  "dishes;"  tseyuwd,  "a  child;" 
JcOweld,  "meat."  (Pickering:  "  Indian  Languages,"  p.  26. )  It  is  the 
same  in  Cherokee  with  all  verbs,  the  object  being  never  named. 
This  is  also  the  case  in  Central  and  Southern  America;  thus  in 
Tamanacan,yucttm  =  "  to  eat  bread  ;  "jemeri=  "to  eat  fruit,  honey," 
&c;  jancri  =  "  to  eat  meat." 

1  Sir  Charles  Lyell  ("Antiquity  of  Man,"  4th  edit.,  p.  152)  well 
observes,  that  "  if  the  numerous  words,  idioms  and  phrases,  many 
of  them  of  ephemeral  duration,  which  are  thus  invented  by  the 
young  and  old  in  various  classes  of  society,  in  the  nursery,  the 
school,  the  camp,  the  fleet,  the  courts  of  law,  and  the  study  of  the 
man  of  science  or  literature,  could  all  be  collected  together  and  put 
on  record,  their  number  in  one  or  two  centuries  might  compare 
with  the  entire  permauent  vocabulary  of  the  language.''  Further 
on  he  gives  the  following  remarkable  instance  of  the  rapid  changes 
which  non-literary  languages  undergo  : — "  A  German  colony  in 
Pennsylvania  was  cut  off  from  frequent  communication  with  Europe 


THE  IDOLA  OF  GLOTTOLOGT.  83 

The  dialects  of  barbarian  tribes  are  perpetually 
altering.  There  is  nothing  to  preserve  them — 
neither  traditions,  nor  ritual,  nor  literature.  The 
savage  has  the  delight  of  a  child  in  uttering  new 
sounds,  and  exhibiting  his  power  and  inventive- 
ness in  this  manner,  with  none  of  the  restraints 
by  which  civilisation  confines  the  invention  of 
slang  to  the  schoolboy  and  the  mob.  In  some 
cases,  among  the  Caribes  of  the  Antille  Isles,  for 
instance,  where  the  wife  was  generally  stolen  from 
an  alien  tribe,  the  language  of  the  women  and  the 
men  is  essentially  different ;  and  this,  of  course, 
exercises  considerable  influence  upon  the  language 
spoken  by  the  next  generation.1  Then,  again  the 
barbarian  is  especially  open  to  all  the  influences 
of  external  nature,  climate,  food,  and  so  forth, 
with  nothing  to  check    the    disintegrating    effect 

for  about  a  quarter  of  a  century,  during  the  wars  of  the  French 
Kevolution,  between  1792  and  1815.  So  marked  had  been  the 
effect  even  of  this  brief  and  imperfect  isolation,  that  when  Prince 
Bernhard  of  Saxe -Weimar  travelled  among  them  a  few  years  after 
the  peace,  he  found  the  peasants  speaking  as  they  had  done  in  Ger- 
many in  the  preceding  century,  and  retaining  a  dialect  which  at 
home  had  already  become  obsolete.  Even  after  the  renewal  of  the 
German  emigration  from  Europe,  when  I  travelled  in  1841  among 
the  same  people  in  the  retired  valley  of  the  Allegbanies,  I  found 
the  newspapers  full  of  terms  half -English  and  half- German,  and 
many  an  Anglo-Saxon  word  which  had  assumed  a  Teutonic  dress 
as  'fencen,'  to  fence,  instead  of  umzaiinen  ;  'flauer'  for  flour, 
instead  of  mehl,  and  so  on." 

1  Similarly  we  are  told  that  the  women  in  Greenland  change  k 
into  ng  and  t  into  ft. 


\ 


84  THE  IDOLA  OF  GLOTTOLOGY. 

these  may  have  upon  the  combination  of  sounds  ; 
hence  we  are  not  surprised  at  finding  the  same 
word,  orang,  "  man,1'  appearing  in  the  Polynesian 
idioms  under  the  various  forms  of  rang,  olan,  Ian, 
ala,  la,  na,  da,  and  ra.1  Sometimes,  moreover, 
the  custom  known  under  the  name  of  tapu  among 
the  Pacific  Islanders  will  have  acted  upon  lan- 
guage, according  to  which  every  word  which  con- 
tains a  syllable  identical  with  that  forming  part 
of  the  name  of  the  reigning  chief  has  to  be 
dropped  or  changed,  and  a  new  word  adopted  in 
its  place.  Thus  mi  has  been  substituted  for  po, 
"  night,"  in  Tahitian,  since  the  reign  of  Queen 
Pomare  ;  and  a  king  with  the  name  Tu  caused 
fetu,  "  star,"  to  be  transformed  mtofetia.  Pro- 
fessor Max  Miiller  2  points  out  that  a  similar  cus- 
tom, called  ukuhlonipa,  prevails  among   the  Kafir 

1  Logan,  "Journal  in  Indian  Archipelago,"  iii.  665. 

2  Lectures,  ii.  37-40.  Sacred  dialects,  also,  will  little  by  little 
come  to  exercise  an  influence  upon  the  current  language.  These 
are  not  unfrequent  among  barbarous  nations.  Thus  in  Green- 
land the  sacred  language  of  the  conjurors  is  for  the  most  part 
an  arbitrary  perversion  of  the  significations  of  known  words  ; 
talc,  "darkness,"  for  instance,  being  used  in  the  sense  of  "the 
north,"  giving  rise  to  two  new  words  of  this  secret  speech,  tarsoak 
(earth)  and  tarsoarmis  (roots).  These  sacred  languages  are  the 
analogue  of  the  slang  of  the  schoolboy,  the  European  representative 
of  the  barbarian.  At  Winchester,  for  example,  a  secret  jargon  has 
been  handed  down  from  generation  to  generation,  and  every  new- 
comer, like  a  fresh  member  of  the  thieves'  fraternity,  has  to  be 
initiated  in  this  school  slang,  as  has  lately  been  made  unenviably 
notorious. 


THE  IDOLA  OF  GLOTTOLOGY.  85 

women,  who  are  forbidden  to  pronounce  a  word 
which  happens  to  contain  a  sound  similar  to  one 
in  the  names  of  their  nearest  relations.  This 
usage,  however,  is  but  one  phase  of  the  way  in 
which  the  barbarian  will  play  with  language, 
regarding  it  at  once  with  superstitious  awe,  as 
though  the  word  in  itself  had  an  ominous  power, 
and  as  an  opportunity  for  displaying  his  wit  and 
imagination.1  Nothing  is  really  harder  than  to 
keep  a  language  from  changing  where  it  is  not 
protected  by  the  habits  of  settled  life,  especially 
when  men  meet  but  seldom  together,  and  when 
the  transparent  uninflectional  character  of  the 
language  allows  every  word,  however  formal,  to 
retain  its  full  force  and  independent  meaning. 
The  comparatively  stationary  nature  of  Eskimaux, 
which  seems   to  have  changed  but  slightly  since 

1  According  to  Hale  ("United  States  Exploring  Expedition," 
vii.  290),  "the  manner  of  forming  new  words"  among  the 
Tahitians  "  seems  to  be  arbitrary.  In  many  cases,  the  substitutes 
are  made  by  changing  or  dropping  some  letter  or  letters  of  the 
original  word,  as  hopoi  for  hepai,  .  .  .  au  for  tan,  .  .  .  vea  for 
vera,  '  not,'  &c.  In  other  cases,  the  word  substituted  is  one  which 
had  before  a  meaning  nearly  related  to  that  of  the  term  disused. 
...  In  some  cases,  the  meaning  or  origin  of  the  new  word  is  un- 
known, and  it  may  be  a  mere  invention,  as  ofai  for  ohatu, '  stone  ;  " 
pape  for  vai,  '  water ; ' poke  for  mate,  '  dead .' "  What  a  picture  this 
is  of  the  variability  and  living  productiveness  of  savage  languages  ; 
words  invented  and  altered  at  will  to  supply  the  places  of  those 
which  have  been  banished  from  the  speech  by  superstituous  fear  ! 

Dr  Hyde  Clarke  tells  me  that  in  China  "the  new  Emperor's 
name  taboos  a  character,  b\it  by  compounding  it  is  only  clipped." 


\ 


86  THE  IDOLA  OF  GLOTTOLOGY. 

the  time  of  Egede,  and  the  astonishing  identity 
of  dialect,  more  especially  among  the  eastern 
tribes,  may  be  ascribed  to  the  long  winters,  which 
oblige  the  different  communities  to  live  closely 
packed  together.  At  all  events,  we  are  told  that 
since  the  institution  of  an  annual  fair  among  the 
Rocky  Mountains,  the  idioms  of  the  eastern  and 
western  portions  of  the  nation,  who  at  first  were 
hardly  understood  by  one  another,  have  become 
more  and  more  assimilated ; '  while  the  phenomenon 
noticed  by  Messerschmidt  among  the  Ostiaks, 
where  villages  a  mile  or  two  apart  are  unintelligible 
to  each  other,2  will  be  explained  by  the  agglutina- 
tive framework  of  the  language.  Where  the  plural 
is  expressed  by  an  independent  word  signifying 
number,  one  word  will  do  as  well  as  another  ;  for 
such  a  purpose  we  might  use  indifferently  "  many/' 
or  "  multitude,"  or  "  company."  Nor  must  we 
forget  how  rapid  are  the  social  changes  that  take 
place  among  savages,  and  language  is  the  expres- 
sion of  an  existing  state  of  society.  A  tribe  may 
be  decimated  by  famine  or  disease,  it  may  amalga- 
mate with  another,  or  still  oftener  it  may  be  con- 
quered and  enslaved,  and  so  forced  in  the  course 
of  a  generation  or  two  to  adopt  the  dialect  of  its 

1  Gallatin's  "  Synopsis  of  the  Indian  Tribes  of  North  America," 
in  the  Archveologia  Americana,  vol.  ii. 
8  Max  Miiller,  "  Lectures,"  i.  56. 


THE  IDOLA  OF  GLOTTOLOGY.  87 

conquerors.  The  vocabulary  of  a  savage  is  never 
very  large  ;  the  strain  upon  the  memory  of  the 
learner,  therefore,  is  not  great.  All  this  is  abun- 
dantly sufficient  to  show  that  the  persistency  of 
form  which  we  observe  in  the  Aryan  family  is 
altogether  exceptional,  due  partly  to  the  semi- 
civilised  life  attained  before  the  first  emigration 
set  out,  partly  to  a  common  stock  of  traditions, 
partly  to  the  inflectional  character  of  the  language  ; 
and  we  cannot  argue  from  this  to  other  families 
of  speech  where  the  rule  will  be  change  and 
not  fixity,  variety  and  not  similarity.1 

1  So  greatly  do  the  several  Basque  dialects  differ  from  one  an- 
other, even  on  the  same  side  of  the  Pyrenees,  that  a  servant  girl 
of  my  acquaintance,  who  had  been  born  and  brought  up  at  St  Pee, 
and  therefore  spoke  the  Labourdiu  dialect,  found  the  Souletin  of 
Tardets,  a  place  not  forty  miles  distant,  perfectly  unintelligible. 

The  Rev.  W.  Webster  writes  to  me:  "One  of  the  most  curious 
cases  of  mingled  dialects  was  Bayonne.  Old  people  have  frequently 
told  me  that  there  used  to  be  three  distinct  dialects  in  what  is  now 
the  modern  town.  North  of  the  Adour,  in  S.  Esprit,  where  the 
railway  station  is,  they  spoke  the  Landais  patois  ;  in  Petit  Bayonne, 
i.e.,  between  the  Adour  and  the  ISTive,  they  spoke  a  peculiar  patois, 
possibly  influenced  by  the  Jews,  of  whom  Petit  Bayonne  was  the 
compulsory  '  quartier '  before  the  Revolution  ;  in  Bayonne  Proper, 
south  of  the  Adour  and  the  Nive,  they  spoke  the  Anglet  patois. 
The  difference  between  the  Auglet  patois  and  the  Landais  is  con- 
siderable, in  writing  at  least ;  between  the  Anglet  and  Petit  Bayonne 
chiefly  in  pronunciation.  All  three  would  be  called  '  Gascoun.'  So 
in  the  little  basin  of  Bedous,  in  the  Vallee  d'Aspe,  there  are  three  dis- 
tinct patois  in  a  radius  of  three  miles:  one  is  nearly  =  the  Bearnais 
of  the  Val  d'Ossau  ;  another  much  influenced  by  Spanish,  the 
third  more  thoroughly  Gascon.  The  difference  in  single  words  is 
as  great  as  hilke,  hilho,  for  maynatge  and  mainade,  'boy'  or  'girl,' 
'  son  '  or  '  daughter,'  hemno  and  mougerre  for  '  woman.' ,] 


88  THE  IDOLA  OF  GLOTTOLOGY. 

Besides  these  negative  instances  of  the  miscon- 
ceptions and  erroneous  generalisations  which  arise 
from  too  narrow  a  view  of  Glottology,  and  from 
the  false  belief  that  all  its  problems  can  be  solved 
by  a  study  of  the  Aryan  languages  alone,  an 
affirmative  instance  will  be  needed  to  show  how 
the  converse  holds  good,  how  the  particular  can 
only  be  explained  from  the  universal,  the  part 
from  the  whole.  We  cannot  understand  even  the 
Aryan  group  aright,  unless  we  put  it  in  its  proper 
place,  and  examine  it  in  connection  with  the 
general  facts  of  philology.  The  original  form  of 
verbal  expression — that  is,  the  representation  of 
the  carrying  out  of  will  into  action  in  time — is 
ordinarily  said  to  have  been  the  immediate  addi- 
tion of  a  pronoun  to  a  root.  This  would  hardly 
be  an  adequate  explanation,  even  were  it  true  that 
all  radicals  were  verbal ;  and  this,  as  we  have  seen, 
is  by  no  means  the  case.  In  Magyar  vdr-t-am  is 
"  I  waited  for  it,"  and  Ms-em  is  "  my  knife,  while 
in  old  Egyptan,  ran-i  means  indifferently  "  my 
name  "  and  "  I  name."  What  is  it,  then,  that  con- 
stitutes a  verb?  or  rather,  since  Glottology  is  an  his- 
torical science,  what  is  the  origin  of  the  verbal  idea? 
Now  the  d  liferent  words  and  tenses  of  the  Aryan  verb 
have  been  created  by  suffixing  various  pronouns  and 
verbal  radicals,  some  of  which  belong  to  an  older 
period  than  others.  Those  moods  and  tenses  which 
have  been  formed  by  the  help  of  another  verb,  such 


THE  IDOLA  OF  GLOTTOLOGY.  89 

as  the  Romance  futures,  the  Teutonic  perfects,  the 
Latin  imperfect  or  future,  or  the  Greek  and  San- 
skrit future  and  optative,  are  clearly  of  secondary 
antiquity,  and  presuppose  already  existing  verbal 
forms.  The  aorists,  again,  and  presents  with 
extended  bases,  can  hardly  go  back  to  the  first 
beginning  of  the  verb.  The  reduplicated  perfect 
affords  room  for  doubt,  and  it  may  have  been 
coeval  with  such  simple  presents  as  ad-mi  or 
as-mi,  in  which  the  pronoun  is  attached  to  the 
root  without  any  intervening  syllable.  Granting, 
however,  that  these  simple  presents  are  the  oldest 
forms  of  a  verb — and  their  rarity  and  simplicity 
of  meaning  point  to  this — we  have  not  advanced 
towards  a  solution  of  our  question,  What  was  the 
original  purport  of  the  verbal  idea  ?  From  the 
Aryan  alone  we  should  be  inclined  to  conclude 
that  it  expressed  present  time,  the  most  definite 
possible  conception  of  action,  however,  and  one 
which  philosophy  teaches  us  is  among  the  latest 
arrived  at.  Present  time,  moreover,  implies  a 
knowledge  at  least  of  the  past,  if  not  of  the  future, 
with  which  it  may  be  compared  ;  and  some  of  the 
lower  races,  like  the  New  Caledonians,  who  can- 
not be  made  to  understand  the  abstract  notions  of 
"  yesterday  "  and  "  to-morrow,"  are  equally  unable 
to  express  the  notion  of  "  to-day."  The  primitive 
Aryan,  therefore,  if  he  began  with  the  expression 


90  THE  IDOLA  OF  GLOTTOLOGY. 

of  present  time,  must  have  stood  on  a  high  level 
of  culture.  Here,  then  the  study  of  the  Aryan 
family  cannot  give  us  the  answer  we  require. 
With  Semitic,  however,  it  is  altogether  different. 
The  Semite,  who  never  had  the  sense  of  indivi- 
dual freedom  of  will  and  action  which  distin- 
guished the  Aryan,  preserved  with  but  little 
alteration  the  primitive  vague  conception  which 
underlay  the  verb.  The  so-called  future  or  im- 
perfect of  the  Semitic  languages  is  not  a  tense  in 
the  Aryan  acceptation  of  the  word.  It  does  not 
express  time  at  all,  merely  relation.  Now,  this 
was  originally  the  sole  Semitic  verbal  form.  The 
other  so-called  Semitic  tense  is  nothing  else  than 
the  participle,  the  nomen  agent  is,  from  which  the 
third  person  singular  masculine  can  still  be  only 
artificially  distinguished,1  and  it  did  not  take  its 
rise  until  what  Ewald  calls  the  Aramaic  or  second 
period  in  the  growth  of  the   Semitic  family.     In 


1  Ewald  disputes  this,  but  his  arguments  are  not  convincing.  A 
parallel  instance  may  be  quoted  from  the  Turkish,  where  the  per- 
sons of  the  present  are  formed  by  postfixiug  the  pronouns,  the 
third  person  being  (as  in  the  Semitic  languages)  the  bare  form  of 
the  present  participle.  Thus  dogur  is  "striking "  and  "he  strikes  ;  " 
dogur-um,  "I  strike"  (literally  "striking  I  "),  and  so  on.  In  this 
way  the  present  is  distinguished  from  the  aorist,  which  is  an 
abstract  substantive  with  the  person-endings  affixed.  Thus  from 
dogd,  "a  striking,"  is  derived  dogd-um,  "  I  struck  ;  "  and  with  the 
plural  suffix  dog'/i-lcr,  is  at  once  "  strikings  "  and  "they  struck," 
just  as  dogur-lar  is  "  strikers  "or  "  they  strike." 


THE  IDOLA  OF  GLOTTOLOGY.  91 

time  this  perfect,  as  it  is  commonly  termed,  came 
to  acquire  a  kind  of  present  force ;  but  though 
more  verbal  in  character,  according  to  our  Aryan 
ideas,  than  the  imperfect,  it  never  was  a  tense  in 
the  true  sense  of  the  word.1     Where  intercourse 

1  Since  the  above  was  written,  my  friend  the  Rev.  G.  C.  Gel- 
dart  has  been  good  enough  to  send  me  the  following  remarks, 
which  seem  to  me  to  be  extremely  valuable,  and  to  show  that  other 
nouns  besides  the  nomen  agentis  went  to  form  the  Semitic  perfect, 
although  the  latter  came  at  last  to  preponderate.  "  In  (the  Assy- 
rian) dapsacu  (acala,  '  I  mature  corn '),  you  have  undoubtedly  a 
very  near  approach  to  a  verb  ;  it  seems  to  me  to  stand  proportion- 
ally as  near  to  one  as  ristanacu  (I  [am]  eldest)  is  distant.  In 
cases  like  the  last  there  is  no  verb  at  all,  it  being  supplied  in  the 
mind  of  the  writer  and  reader.  Although  in  iEthiopic  gabarcu 
means  '  I  did  make,'  this  is  a  further  development  which  does  not 
fully  belong  to  the  Assyrian  stage  of  Semitic.  Hence  I  should 
designate  a  word  like  ristanacu  as  a  transitional  form  detected  in  a 
state  wherein  it  very  closely  counterfeits  the  verb,  and  is  seen  to 
be  passing  in  that  direction,  but  not  as  a  genuine  verb.  The  value 
of  such  compounds,  as  affording  an  insight  iuto  the  manner  in 
which  real  verbs  may  arise  from  the  combination  of  verbal  and 
other  conceptions  with  personal  pronouns,  and  actually  have  done 
so,  may  be  illustrated  by  the  following  example.  In  Professor  Lee's 
'  Hebrew  Grammar,'  p.  214,  §  13,  I  find  cited  from  Jer.  xxii.  23, 
the   unique    forms    \FO$',J  \nj3pft     T^FT^  which  consist   of 

the  second  person  of  the  pronoun  combined  with  participles  in  Kal, 
Puhal,  and  Niphal  respectively,  into  a  sort  of  word  which  can 
hardly  be  called  correctly  a  verb,  and  is,  I  believe,  entirely  without 
a  parallel  in  the  language.  This  form  has  been,  I  gather  from  Lee, 
a  regular  crux  to  grammarians ;  but  it  seems  to  me  to  stand  on 
just  the  same  footing  as  tsabtacu  (I  am  taking),  and  so  the  two 
illustrate  each  other.     I  should  speak  of  "^.3*^  as  a  tentative 

form  which  turned  out  abortive  and  unsuccessful ;  tsabtacu  1  should 
call  one  which  did  succeed,  made  good  its  appearance  in  the  lan- 
guage, and  in  the  later  stages  of  Semitism  became  accepted  as  a 


02  THE  IDOLA  OF  GLOTTOLOGT. 

with  a  foreign  people,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Assy- 
rians, and  to  a  lesser  degree  of  the  Gheez,  brought 
about  something  like  a  conception  of  verbal  time 
and  mood,  the  varying  vocalic  forms  of  the  imper- 
fect were  appropriated  for  this  purpose,  but  even 
here  with  no  very  great  strictness.  A  similar 
device  has  been  adopted  in  Arabic,  helped  out  by 
the  use  of  other  words  like  kad,  "now."  In  the 
Semitic  family,  accordingly,  the  original  purport 


true  and  real  verbal  form,  embodying  the  association  of  action  in 
past  time,  i.e.,  a  genuine  perfect  tense.  .  .  .  Xow  my  idea  is,  that 
of  two  views  one  is  right,  according  as  we  may  be  able  to  settle 
the  matter  by  the  aid  of  chronology  or  not.  Would  it  be  possible 
to  fix  the  relative  historical  dates  of  the  inscriptions  wherein  these 
several  -cu  forms  appear  ?  and  would  not  such  a  chronological 
arrangement  of  them  bring  out  the  fact  that  ristanacu  stood  among 
the  earliest,  dapsacu  among  the  latest,  of  them  ?  If  so,  then  ris- 
tanacu will  constitute  the  first,  and  dapsacu  the  last,  term  in  the 
progress  of  the  Assyrian  compound  towards  that  condition  which 
its  JEthiopic  analogue  {gabarcu)  really  has  attained,  viz.,  that  of  a 
genuine  verbal  inflection.  Or  if  this  cannot  be  done,  then  I  should 
describe  these  -ciCs  as  a  cluster  of  instances  wherein  a  pronominal 
affix  was  seen  vacillating  at  random  in  its  choice  of  a  base  to  which 
it  could  most  congenially  attach  itself  ;  the  one  ultimately  pre- 
ferred being,  as  we  know  from  other  sources,  exclusively  a  verbal 
one.  But  either  way,  my  general  impression  is,  that  in  our  survey 
of  these  formations  we  are  admitted  to  no  less  interesting  a  spec- 
tacle than  the  genesis  of  an  inflection,  and  that  we  here  obtain  a 
deeper  insight  into  the  constructive  processes  of  language  than 
we  have  ever  gained  before.  Hincks,  I  see,  styled  Assyrian  the 
'  Semitic  Sanskrit ; '  but  I  do  not  think  that  even  Vaidik  Sanskrit 
affords  us  any  traces  of  the  active  origination  of  a  tense.  In  order 
to  have  a  Sanskrit  equivalent  to  dapsacu,  we  ought  to  seek  the  suffix 
of  the  first  personal  pronoun,  -mi,  fastening  itself  promiscuously 
tothe  end  of  nouns   and  adjectives  as  well  as  verbs,  and  ought 


THE  ID0LA  OF  GLOTTOLOGY.  93 

of  the  verb  was  purely  indefinite  :  it  had  no  refer-  \ 
ence  to  any  particular  time  or  mode ;  it  did  not 
even  denote  action  in  general,  but  regarded  the 
act  of  the  will  as  an  affection  of  the  object,  not  as 
an  exertion  on  the  part  of  the  subject.  We  may 
compare  the  use  of  the  Greek  aorist  in  similes, 
where  it  is  a  little  remarkable  that  the  verbal 
form  which  best  exhibits  the  bare  root  should  be 
set  apart  for  this  aoristic  or  indefinite  purpose. 
More  remarkable  still  is  the  usage  of  the  polysyn- 

indeed  to  find  some  pronoun  of  which  -mi  is  a  manifest  abbrevia- 
tion, as  -eu  is  of  anacu ;  but  there  is  not,  so  far  as  I  can  discover  in 
Professor  Wilson's  chapter  on  the  grammar  of  the  Vedas,  anything 
of  the  kind.  But  the  comparatively  recent  origin,  in  point  of  time, 
of  this  tense  in  Assyrian  seems  to  me  highly  suggestive  as  regards 
the  history  of  inflections.  First,  the  perfect  could  have  formed  no 
part  of  the  '  original  stock  of  the  Semitic  speech.'  In  Assyrian  the 
-cu  has  not  yet  acquired  any  definite  association  with  the  idea  of  past 
time  at  all ;  and  it  is  plain  that  this  association,  when  connected  with 
it,  as  in  the  JEthiopic  gabarcu,  was  purely  fortuitous  and  conven- 
tional. Also  it  is  very  surprising  that  so  important  an  inflection 
should  have  been  delayed  so  long  in  the  social  and  intellectual  exist- 
ence of  the  Assyrians.  They  must  be  supposed  to  have  felt  the  want 
of  it  as  the  need  for  precision  of  thought  progressed  among  them  ; 
because  I  conceive  it  is  not  pretended  that  the  aorist  iscun  (he  made) 
was  definitely  a  past  tense.  But  it  is  quite  beyond  what  one  would 
have  expected  in  the  history  of  language,  that  a  people  should  have 
possessed  a  well-organised  literature  before  their  system  of  inflec- 
tions was  completely  settled  ;  and  we  apparently  learn  what  as  a 
general  truth  I  had  long  suspected,  that  even  within  historic  ages 
the  instability,  and  in  consequence  the  expansibility  and  flexibility, 
of  language  was  proportionately  much  greater  than  it  became  after- 
wards." The  views  here  expressed  have  since  been  more  fully  worked 
out  by  the  author  and  embodied  in  a  Paper  read  before  the  Oriental 
Congress  at  London  in  1874. 


94  THE  IDOLA  OF  GLOTTOLOGT. 

thetising  languages  of  North  America,  where  the 
idea  of  time  or  mode  is  altogether  absent  from  the 
verb,  and  personal  relations  are  alone  indicated. 
For  this  purpose  a  most  intricate  and  elaborate 
machinery  has  been  devised,  and  according  to  the 
Baptist  missionary  Edwin  James,  the  Chippeway 
Indian  possesses  no  less  than  from  six  to  eight 
thousand  verbal  forms.  So,  too,  in  Eskimaux 
we  have  such  monstrosities  as  aglehkigiartorasuar- 
nipok,  "  he  goes  away  hastily  and  exerts  himself  to 
write."1 

Much  the  same  phenomenon  reappears  in 
Basque,  a  different  form  being  employed  for 
addressing  a  superior,  an  equal,  a  child,  or  a 
woman,  and  in  reference  to  an  object  in  the  first, 
second,  or  third  person  singular  and  plural. 
Thus  det  is  "  I  have;"  ditet,  "I  have  them;" 
dizut,  (i  I  have  it  for  thee  ; "  at,\"  I  have  thee ;  " 
zaitustet,  "I  have  you;"  dizquizutet,  "I  have 
them  for  you  ;"  daunat  replacing  the  last  when  a 
woman  is  meant,  and  dayat  when  an  equal.  Here 
the  forms  originated  in  the  incorporation  of  the 
objective  and  oblique  cases  of  the  personal  pro- 
nouns, for  the  most  part  before  the  root,  which 
is  followed  by  the  postfixed  subject,  a  noun 
of  number  (it)  being  actually  intercalated  into 
the  root  itself  when  the  plural  has  to  be  signified. 

1  See   Gallatin,  "Trans.  Amer.   Antiq.  Soc.,"  vol.  ii.  p.  176; 
Crantz,  "History  of  Greenland,"  vol.  i.  p.  224. 


THE  IDOLA  OF  GLOTTOLOGT.  95 

The  same  fact  meets  its  again  in  Accadian. 
Here  we  have  but  two  tenses,  an  aorist  and  a  pre- 
sent. The  first  is  formed  by  the  immediate  addi- 
tion of  the  pronouns  to  the  root ;  the  second  by  a 
vocalic  prolongation  of  the  root :  thus,  in-gin,  u  he 
made  ;"  in-gine,  u  he  makes ;  "  in-gar,  "  he  did  ; " 
in-garra,  (l  he  does/'  The  present  is  formed  in 
the  same  way  in  the  Tibetan  dialects,  and  clearly 
points  out  the  priority  of  the  aorist,  from  which 
the  idea  of  present  time  was  obtained,  with  the 
growth  of  experience  and  civilisation,  by  dwelling 
upon  the  sound  of  the  aorist.1  With  the  creation 
of  a  present  the  aorist  ceased  to  be  aoristic,  and 
became  a  past  tense.  Thus  Turanian  bears  the 
same  testimony  as  Semitic,  and  explains  the  ori- 
ginal nature  of  the  Aryan  verb  ;  while  the  obser- 
vation of  actually  existing  cases,  like  that  of  the 
New  Caledonians  mentioned  above,  supplies  the 
historic  verification  of  the  theory,  and  throws  a 
new  light  upon  the  development  of  mankind. 

1  Mr  J.  H.  Trumbull  writes  to  me  : — "  I  observe  tbe  accordance 
of  Algonkin  with  Accadian  in  the  later  formation  of  the  present  by 
an  affix,  the  so-called  present  of  the  missionary-grammars  being 
demonstrably  an  aorist.  Eliot — who  knew  the  Algonkin  language 
better  than  any  Anglo-American  since  his  time  has  known  it,  and 
who  was  a  good  Hebraist — used  throughout  his  version  of  the  Bible 
the  same  form  for  present  and  "narrative  "  aorist,  from  which  tbe 
immediate  and  continuing  present  is  formed  by  a  suffixed  particle." 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE   IDOLUM   OF   PRIMEVAL   CENTRES   OF  LANGUAGE. 

Plato  has  laid  down  that  the  end  of  science,  as 
of  philosophy,  is  unity ;  and  he  attempted  to 
anticipate  the  slow  processes  of  modern  induction 
by  discovering  a  master-science  from  which  all 
the  others  radiate.  It  would  seem  nowadays  as 
though  the  dream  of  the  Greek  thinker  were  in  a 
fair  way  to  be  realised.  The  physical  sciences  are 
becoming  more  and  more  metaphysical  with  the 
increasing  transcendentalism  of  their  highest  laws, 
while  the  historical  sciences  are  growing  more  and 
more  physical  as  the  interdependence  of  the  two 
is  more  clearly  recognised.  Science  is  beginning 
to  deal  almost  exclusively  with  force,  in  itself  a 
metaphysical  conception ;  and  the  doctrine  of  the 
conservation  of  forces,  that  is,  of  one  invariable 
whole  which  manifests  itself  under  various  inter- 
changing forms,  is  the  keynote  of  modern  re- 
search. "Whether,  however,  an  ideal  unity  will 
ever  be  attained,  is  a  question  which  admits  of 
grave  doubt  in  the  face  of  the  opposition  and  con- 


THE  IDOLUM   OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES.  97 

tradiction  which,  lie  at  the  foundation  of  the  world, 
of  the  separation  of  our  several  senses,  of  the 
deficiency  of  our  data  and  the  limitation  of  our 
positive  knowledge,  and  of  the  mysterious  but 
impenetrable  background  which  appears  to  lie 
beyond  the  highest  and  primary  laws.  Neverthe- 
less, unity  is  the  goal  of  every  inquirer;  it  is 
necessitated  by  the  very  constitution  of  the  mind ; 
and  in  so  far  as  thought  is  one,  or  rather,  as  the 
way  in  which  we  are  compelled  to  regard  the  pheno- 
menal world  is  the  same,  a  certain  kind  of  unity 
is  not  only  attainable,  but  necessary.  We  cannot 
help  believing  that  under  all  the  variety  that  we 
see  there  lies  a  hidden  unity,  and  that  that  variety 
is  itself  but  a  way  of  producing  unity.  If  we  are 
to  think  at  all,  we  must  sum  up  the  isolated 
phenomena  under  general  heads,  we  must  discover 
some  similarity  and  order  in  them;  and  the  more 
nearly  the  mental  order  corresponds  with  objective 
sequence,  the  more  fully  shall  we  satisfy  the  re- 
quirements of  science.  But  we  must  not  forget 
that  the  so-called  laws  of  science  are,  after  all, 
only  so  many  mental  conceptions,  the  imaginative 
framework  which  we  fill  up  with  the  results  of 
our  experience,  or  rather  of  the  manner  in  which 
we  are  obliged  to  look  at  things.  Now  these  con- 
ceptions are  all  alike  in  so  far  as  they  are  thought, 
and  we  can  ideally  sum  up  one  conception  under 

G 


98  THE  IDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES. 

another,  until  at  last  we  reach  the  highest  and 
most  comprehensive  unity.  It  is  this  that  we  call 
the  world ;  and  the  day  on  which  this  general 
unifying  conception  was  first  struck  out  was  a  day 
of  importance  in  the  progress  of  the  human  race. 
The  Greeks  ascribed  the  discovery  to  Pythagoras ; 
and  whether  or  not  it  was  really  invented  by  the 
semi-mythical  Saurian,  the  Greek  word  was  well 
worthy  of  a  nation  of  philosophers.  Koo-fios,  or 
"  order,"  is  the  best  and  truest  conception  of  the 
universe  that  can  be  arrived  at ;  it  is  the  summing- 
up  of  civilisation  and  civilised  reflection  in  con- 
tradistinction to  the  unreflective  fetichism  of  the 
savage,  who  can  see  nothing  except  caprice  and 
disorder  around  him.  Unity  must  be  found  in 
order,  if  it  is  to  be  found  anywhere  ;  it  is  just  that 
orderly  arrangement  of  our  conceptions,  that  suc- 
cessive sequence  and  co-ordination  of  thought 
which  impresses  itself  upon  the  outside  world, 
that  enables  us  to  detect  and  name  an  unity  amid 
the  everlasting  flux  of  things.  The  Romans,  in 
this,  as  in  most  other  intellectual  matters,  the 
pupils  of  the  Greeks,  were  content  to  translate 
/coa/ios,  by  rnundus,  in  which,  however,  the  refer- 
ence to  well-disciplined  arrangement  was  lost,  and 
replaced  by  an  allusion  to  the  neatness  of  personal 
adornment.1     It  was  only  for  the  needs  of  Cicero's 

1  In  Sanskrit,  also,  loka  means  both  "  mundus  "  and  "  monde,"  as 
in  the  compound  sakala-loka-pujyah,  "  venerated  by  all  the  world." 


THE  IDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES.  99 

amateur  philosophising,  and  under  the  subsequent 
pressure  of  a  dry  scholastic  philosophy,  that  the  Latin 
language  yielded  universum,  universe;  where  all 
the  vivid  concrete  metaphor  of  fresh  Greek  thought 
has  had  to  make  way  for  the  barren  abstraction 
which  simply  affirms  that  unity  is  "  one."  Our  own 
world  is  of  far  humbler  parentage.  It  is  merely 
wer-alt,  "  generation  of  men,"  from  alt,  the 
Gothic  aids,  "  age  "  or  "  generation,"2  and  the  Old 
Saxon  wer,  "  man,"  which  appears  as  a  Gentile 
suffix  under  the  form  ware,  "men,"  in  words  like 
Rom-ware,  "  Romans,"  and  has  its  kindred  in  the 
Gothic  vair,  the  Latin  vir,  the  Greek  77/5-0)?,  the 
Gaelic  fear,  the  Welsh  gwr,  and  the  Sanskrit 
vir-as.  It  is  the  same  root,  vri,  that  has  produced 
virago  and  virgin,  as  well  as  vires,  "  strength,"  in 
Latin,  and  vrihi,  "  rice,"  in  Sanskrit,  and  whose 
primary  meaning  is  simply,  "  to  grow."  The  same 
idea  is  contained  in  the  word  which  is  used  instead 
of  the  representative  of  wer-alt  in  the  Gothic  of 
Ulfilas,  mana-sedhs,  u man's  seed."2  It  is  char- 
acteristic of  the  practical,  domestic,  conservative 
Teuton  to  have  found  his  world  in  the  past 
generations  of  mankind,  just  as  the  richly -gifted 

1  The  word  is  eqivalent  to  the  Greek  aiuv,  as  in  aid-ins,  ald-e 
al&uas,  aiwvicv,  or  aid  bauan  alQva  didyeiv. 

2  Ulfilas  also  has  fairwus  in  the  sense  of  "  world,"  while  olKov/xep-rj 
is  translated  by  midjungards,  "  the  half-way  house  "  between  the 
celestial  and  infernal  regions.  We  get  the  same  idea  in  Scandi- 
navian. 


100  THE  IDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES. 

Greek,  with  his  keen  sense  of  the  "  golden  mean  " 
of  proportion  and  beauty,  found  his  in  the  un- 
changing order  that  underlies  the  whole  course  of 
nature. 

This  instinctive  desire  to  discover  unity  has  had 
its  effect  upon  the  science  of  language.  Here,  as 
elsewhere,  the  aim  of  science  is  to  generalise,  and 
to  show  that  there  is  order,  and  not  caprice,  among 
the  phenomena — classification,  and  not  isolation. 
But  in  this  search  it  is  bound  not  to  go  beyond 
the  facts  and  the  strict  inferences  which  may  be 
drawn  from  them.  However  tempting  an  assump- 
tion may  be,  it  must  at  once  be  set  aside  if  our 
data  fail  to  give  it  plausibility,  much  more  if  they 
actually  tell  against  it.  Now  this,  I  think,  is  the 
condition  of  a  very  common  philological  hypo- 
thesis :  that  all  languages  are  descended  from  one 
original  centre,  or  at  most  from  two  or  three 
centres.  The  assumption  runs  through  a  great 
deal  of  our  modern  glottological  reasoning.  It  is 
implied  in  the  ordinary  classifications  of  languages, 
which  assume  that  families  of  speech  analogous 
to  the  Aryan  are  to  be  found  all  the  world  over. 
Every  idiom,  ancient  or  modern,  has  to  be  brought, 
willing,  nilling,  under  some  "  family  ;"  the  admis- 
sion that  a  language  may  be  sui  generis  is  never 
even  dreamt  of.  We  have  even  had  a  "  Turanian 
family  "  invented,   into  which  everything  that  is 


THE  IDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES.  101 

not  Aryan  or  Semitic  has  been  thrust,  from  Turkish 
and  Tamulian  to  Chinese  and  Red  Indian.  Now, 
however,  that  the  term  "  Turanian"  is  more  pro- 
perly confined  to  the  chain  of  dialects  which 
extend  from  the  North  Cape  to  Tungusia,  em- 
bracing Finnic,  Tartar,  and  Mongolian,  to  which 
Basque  also  is  probably  to  be  added,  and  which  in 
some  measure  exhibit  the  same  marks  of  resem- 
blance as  the  members  of  the  Aryan  group,  a  new 
family  has  been  brought  into  existence,  to  be  called 
Agglutinative,  or  Allophylian,  or  heaven  knows 
what.  Scholars  of  the  highest  reputation  have 
endeavoured  to  derive  Aryan  and  Semitic  from  a 
common  source  ;  and,  when  all  else  failed,  have 
had  recourse  to  the  desperate  expedient  of  making 
them  separate  down  the  opposite  slopes  of  the 
same  chain  of  mountains  shortly  after  the  invention 
of  a  common  tongue.  Nay,  attempts  have  been 
made  to  show  at  least  the  possibility  of  one 
primeval  language,  or  embryonic  language,  on  the 
basis  of  the  theory  that  would  make  a  language 
develop  out  of  an  isolating  into  an  inflectional 
stage,  through  an  intervening  period  of  aggluti- 
nation ;  and  this,  too,  in  a  scientific  spirit,  and  on 
professedly  scientific  grounds,  and  not  after  the 
manner  of  Mr  Foster,  who  discovered  the  language 
of  Eden  in  the  combination  of  a  modern  Arabic  lexi- 
con with  a  rudimentary  Chinese  grammar.     We 


102  THE  IDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES. 

are  still  too  much  under  the  influence  of  early  pre- 
judices ;  we  remember  that  there  was  one  speech 
before  the  confusion  of  Babel,  and  that  in  the  old 
days  of  etymology  nothing  was  easier  than  to  derive 
any  one  language  from  any  other  according  to 
fancy.  A  few  such  instances  as  the  resemblance 
of  sanguis  to  the  Mongolian  sengui,  "  blood,"  or  sex 
to  the  Hebrew  shesk,  "  six,"  were  sufficient  to  settle 
the  question.  Then,  again,  there  is  the  analogy 
of  the  Aryan  languages,  which  all  emanate  from 
one  source  ;  and,  as  we  observed  in  the  last  chapter, 
the  ordinary  procedure  of  Glottology  has  hitherto 
been  to  predicate  of  language  in  general  what  has 
been  found  true  of  Aryan  in  particular.  The  other 
sciences  have  aided  in  the  matter,  tending  as  they  do 
towards  a  common  point  of  agreement,  and  return- 
ing to  the  primeval  world-egg  of  Egyptian  philo- 
sophy, out  of  which  all  things  have  been  generated 
by  a  continuous  process  of  differentiation.  No 
utterance  of  science  is  clearer  than  this,  that  all 
which  is  now  in  beinsr  is  the  result  of  evolution  or 
development;  that  look  where  we  will,  to  the 
most  distant  horizon  of  space,  or  the  dimmest 
antiquity  of  time,  there  is  no  break,  no  void, 
nothing  but  an  unvarying,  unchangeable  conti- 
nuity of  progress.  Darwinism  is  the  most  fashion- 
able hypothesis  of  our  day ;  and  Darwinism  is 
supposed  to  imply  a  common  type  and  a  single  pair 


THE  IDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES.  103 

of  ancestors.  But  some  even  of  the  most  advanced 
supporters  of  the  Darwinian  theory  have  themselves 
been  obliged  to  resign  the  homogeneity  of  the 
human  race  so  far  as  origin  is  concerned.  The 
very  fact  of  the  variation  of  species  demands  it, 
as  different  varieties  would  have  the  best  chance  of 
succeeding  in  the  struggle  for  existence  in  different 
parts  of  the  earth  ;  and  sexual  selection  alone  can- 
not explain  the  black  skin  of  the  negro,  whose 
brain  also  contains  the  colouring  pigment,  or  the 
small  stature  of  the  Andamanner,  or  the  curious 
fact  that  the  population  of  a  continent  corresponds 
with  the  typical  characteristics  of  its  brute  animals. 
We  have  all  been  cast  in  the  same  mould,  or,  as 
St  Paul  puts  it,  we  have  all  the  same  blood ;  but 
it  does  not  follow  that  we  all  come  from  the  same 
ancestry,  still  less  that  all  languages  have  radiated 
from  the  same  centre.  In  fact,  if  we  are  to  believe 
that  articulate  language  began  with  the  period  of 
roots,  remote  as  this  period  is  in  the  history  of  the 
Aryan  race,  it  is  still  not  remote  enough  to  allow 
for  the  vast  changes  that  have  taken  place  in  the 
distribution  of  earth  and  water,  in  the  fauna  and 
flora  that  inhabit  the  land,  and  in  man  himself  in 
all  his  variety  of  form  and  colour.  The  human 
remains  found  in  the  upper  levels  of  the  Seine  near 
Abbeville,  or  the  geological  alterations  that  must 
have  happened  since  the  entrance  of  the  Papuan 


104  THE  IDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES. 

race  into  their  present  habitat,  supposing  they  had 
migrated  from  a  common  cradle  of  mankind,  seem 
irreconcileable  with  the  limited  antiquity  of  the 
root-epoch  of  the  Aryan  languages.  When  the 
latter  first  make  their  appearance,  it  is  in  the  high- 
lands of  Middle  Asia,  between  the  sources  of  the 
Oxus  and  Jaxartes.  Is  it  likely  that  the  Dravi- 
dian  races,  the  "  Dasyus,"  whom  they  encountered 
in  India,  or  the  tribes  which  they  found  existing 
in  India,  in  Asia  Minor,  and  in  Europe,  could 
have  once  belonged  to  the  same  race  with  them- 
selves? All  things,  of  course,  are  possible  in 
science,  and  we  are  often  called  upon  to  believe 
what  is  far  stranger  than  the  strangest  fiction ; 
but  where  this  is  not  the  case,  where  there  are  no 
facts  to  support  the  assumption,  we  must  abide  by 
the  ordinary  analogies  and  conclusions  of  expe- 
rience. The  class  of  languages  nearest  akin  in 
appearance  to  the  Aryan  is  the  Semitic  ;  and  here, 
if  anywhere,  upon  the  received  theory,  we  should 
expect  to  find  the  most  convincing  proofs  of  rela- 
tionship. On  the  contrary,  everything  is  against 
it  :  the  structure  of  the  language,1  the  phonology 
of  the  speech,2  the  conception  of  the  grammar,  the 

1  What  can  be  more  unlike  than  the  triliteral  Semitic  root,  consist- 
ing wholly  of  consonants,  and  ignoring  the  vowels,  and  the  mono- 
syllabic Aryan  radical,  in  which  the  vowel  is  dominant,  with  its 
capacity  of  infinite  development  and  unlimited  composition  ? 

3  Thus  qu  is  essentially  an  Aryan  sound,  unknown  to  the  pure  and 


THE  IDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES.     105 

character  of  the  lexicon,  alike  forhid  the  supposi- 
tion, unless  we  can  imagine  a  psychological  miracle, 
by  which  the  same  mind  was  capable  of  originating 
two  things  so  contrary  as  the  Aryan  and  Semitic 
conception  of  the  verb.1  Add  to  this,  that  while 
we  first  meet  with  the  Aryan  in  the  Hindu  Kush, 
the  earliest  revelations  of  Semitic  speech  point 
unmistakably  to  the  deserts  of  Northern  Arabia. 
The  theory  of  common  primitive  centres  breaks 
down  at  the  very   threshold. 

I  have  more  than  once  said  that,  in  studying 
Glottology,  we  must  not  go  beyond  our  facts  ;  and 
the  statement,  simple  as  it  seems,  cannot  be  too 
often  repeated.  Now  our  facts,  scientifically  con- 
sidered, are,  firstly,  similarity  of  general  structure 
in  language  ;  secondly,  similarity  of  grammar  both 
in  form  and  meaning ;   and  thirdly,  a  regular  and 


unadulterated  Semite.  iEthiopic  seems  to  have  borrowed  the  sound 
from  its  African  neighbours,  as  the  Himyaritic  alphabet,  the  original 
of  the  iEthiopic  syllabary,  is  without  it,  while  the  semi-vowel,  which 
attaches  itself  solely  to  the  gutturals  in  the  JSthiopic,  is  found  in 
Amarihha  or  Amharic  after  other  consonants,  lua,  maa,  rua,  sua, 
shua,  bua,  tua,  nua,  zua,  yua,  dua,  dhua,  fua,  which  M.  d'Abbadie 
("  Catalogue  raisonne  de  Manuscrits  Ethiopiennes,"  p.  vii.)  tells  us 
must  be  pronounced  like  the  French  loi,  moi,  rol.  On  the  other 
hand,  in  what  Aryan  language  can  we  find  the  ayin  of  the  Semitic  ? 
1 1  cannot  do  better  than  quote  Schleicher's  words  on  this  sub- 
ject : — "  Bei  den  so  tief  in's  innerste  Wesen  der  Sprache  eingreifen- 
den  Gegensatzen  an  eine  Verwandtschaft  der  beiden  Sprachstamme 
nicht  im  Entfernsten  zu  denken  sei "  ("Die  Deutsche  Sprache," 
2d  edit,  1869,  p.  21). 


106  THE  IDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES. 

uniform  interchange  of  phonetic  sounds  between 
the  languages  we  are  comparing.  When  once  a 
sufficient  number  of  instances  have  shown  that  a 
certain  letter  in  one  dialect  is  replaced  by  a  certain 
other  letter  in  another  dialect,  we  must  never 
admit  any  violation  of  the  rule  unless  it  can  be 
explained  by  the  action  of  subordinate  laws ;  and 
the  explanation  of  these  interchanges  of  sound  and 
their  mutual  relationship  is  part  of  the  duties  of 
philology.  In  addition  to  these  facts,  which 
belong  for  the  most  part  to  the  province  of 
phonology,  a  fourth  fact  will  be  similarity  of 
signification.  Two  words  may  conform  to  all  the 
requirements  of  Grimm's  law,  and  yet  have 
nothing  to  do  with  each  other.  'Ohos  and  eSo?, 
solea  and  sella,  for  instance,  both  point  back  to  a 
root,  sad,  but  there  is  no  common  idea  that  will 
allow  us  to  bring  them  together,  or  from  which  we 
can  derive  them ;  and  the  attempt  to  do  so  is 
as  futile  as  to  reduce  the  various  incompatible 
meanings  of  a  Semitic  radical  under  one  head,  or 
to  find  some  single  fundamental  conception  for  the 
numberless  significations  attached  to  the  same 
sound  in  such  languages  as  Chinese  or  old  Egyp- 
tian, where  yic  means  at  once  "  me,"  "  agree," 
"  rejoice,"  "  measure,"  "stupid,"  and  "black 
ox  ;  "  or  to,  "  thou,"  "  gift,"  "  direction,"  "  corn," 
"  drop,"     "  type,"     "  tear,"     "  heap,"     "  stick," 


THE  LDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES.  107 

" health,"  "head,"  "throne,"  "man,"  "assembly," 
"wicked,"  "  navigate,"  "  steal,"  "  burn,"  "  carry," 
and  "  give  an  account."  Such,  then,  are  the  facts 
with  which  Glottology  begins,  and  the  lower 
empirical  generalisations  so  derived  furnish  the 
means  for  arriving  at  those  higher  and  wider 
laws  which  are  the  ultimate  object  of  the  science. 
Beyond  the  facts  we  can  never  get,  at  least  if  we 
wish  to  obtain  valid  conclusions.  But  similarity, 
the  comparison  of  the  like  with  the  like,  is  what 
lies  at  the  bottom  of  them  all,  and  hence,  where 
he  cannot  find  a  similarity  which  can  be  scien- 
tifically proved,  the  glottologist  must  resign  an 
opinion,  however  plausible.  This  is  precisely  the 
case  with  the  subject  of  this  chapter.  The  amount 
of  likeness  in  sound,  meaning,  and  relation  which 
is  sufficient  to  establish  a  common  origin  between 
various  dialects  is  the  exception  and  not  the  rule 
in  language.  A  general  likeness,  of  course,  there 
must  be,  otherwise  the  science  of  Glottology  would 
be  impossible,  since  the  subject-matter  of  each 
science  must  be  of  the  same  character ;  but  this 
general  likeness  results  from  the  fundamental 
identity  of  the  human  mind  and  human  experi- 
ence, and  of  the  physical  organs  which  determine 
the  limitations  of  articulate  speech. i 

1  I  am  glad  to  find  that  Professor  Max  Muller,  in  his  recently- 
published  "  Lectures  on  the  Science  of  Religion,"  expresses  himself 


108  THE  IDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES. 

When  we  come  to  look  into  the  facts,  we  find 
that,  so  far  from  supporting  the  hypothesis  of  a 
small  number  of  primitive  centres  of  speech,  they 
are  all,  so  far  as  they  go,  on  the  opposite  side. 
We  have  already  disposed  of  the  alleged  common 
origin  of  Aryan  and  Semitic  in  the  last  chapter ; 
we  need  only  add  the  significant  fact,  that  a  closer 
analysis,  instead  of  confirming  the  belief  in  the 
original  identity  of  the  Aryan  and  Semitic  nume- 
rals— one  of  the  chief  arguments  in  favour  of  the 
idolum  we  are  now  discussing — has  shown  that 
they  are  of  wholly  different  origin.  The  coincidence 
of  sound  between  the  Hebrew  skesk,  "  six,"  and 
s/iebd,  "  seven,"  and  the  Sanskrit  shash  and  saptan* 
had  led  to  their  being  identified ;  and  to  the  fur- 
ther attempt  to  compare  the  Heb.  ekkad,  "  one," 
with  the  Sansk.  ckas,  and  kam-es/i,  "  five  "  with 
the   Sansk.  pan-chan  (quin-que).      But  the  Arabic 

fully  in  accord  with  the  views  of  this  chapter,  Thus  he  says  (p. 
154),  "If  we  confiue  ourselves  to  the  Asiatic  continent,  with  its 
important  peninsula  of  Europe,  we  find  that,  in  the  vast  desert 
of  drifting  human  speech,  three  and  only  three  oases  have  been 
formed  in  which,  before  the  beginning  of  all  history,  language 
became  permanent  and  traditional  ;  assumed,  in  fact,  a  new  charac- 
ter— a  character  totally  different  from  the  original  character  of  the 
floating  and  constantly  varying  speech  of  human  beings."  And 
again  (p.  1(»1),  "Families  of  languages  are  very  peculiar  formations  ; 
they  are,  and  they  must  be,  the  exception,  not  the  rule,  in  the 
growth  of  language.  There  was  always  the  possibility,  but  there 
never  was,  as  far  as  I  can  judge,  any  necessity  for  human  speech 
leaving  its  primitive  stage  of  wild  growth  and  wild  decay." 


THE  IDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES.  109 

sittun  and  Eth.  sedestu  prove  that  the  primitive 
form  of  shesh  contained  a  dental,  derived  probably 
from  sad-sad,  a  by-form  of  sal-sal,  which  appears 
in  shahs,  "  three,"  while  the  Zend  kshwas  points 
as  clearly  to  an  original  initial  guttural,  justifying 
Professor  Goldstiicker's  view  that  it  stands  for  ka- 
katwar,  "(two)  and  four."  Saptan  seems  a  partici- 
pial form  from  the  same  root  that  gives  us  ewco  in 
Greek  and  sequor  in  Latin,  and  thus  to  have 
signified  "'following,"  while  no  amount  of  reason- 
ing can  ever  get  rid  of  the  final  guttural  of  the 
Semitic  numeral,  which  is  best  traced  back  to 
arbd,  "  four."  Ekkad,  I  believe,  is  from  a  foreign 
(Accadian)  source ;  at  all  events,  the  vowel  at  the 
beginning  is  prosthetic,  and  cannot  be  con^ared  with 
the  initial  syllable  of  e-ka,  which,  when  compared 
with  u-nus,  olvo-s,  Gothic  ai-n-s,  and  the  Sanskrit 
pron.  e-na,  "  that,"  would  appear  to  be  a  principal 
part  of  the  Aryan  word.  To  connect  kamesh  and 
panckan  is  comparison  run  mad.  The  whole  argu- 
ment rests  upon  the  same  unscientific  comparison 
of  words  superficially  alike  that  was  the  staple  of 
the  etymologising  of  the  last  century,  and  the  con- 
clusions arrived  at  are  equally  valid.  As  well 
might  we  join  the  Basque  set,  "  six,"  with  sex,  or 
bi,  "two,"  with  bini.1 

When  we  pass  from  the  Semitic  to  other  groups 

1  See  my  "  Assyrian  Grammar,"  pp.  132-133. 


110  THE  IDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES. 

of  languages,  the  difficulty  of  connecting  these 
with  Aryan  becomes  even  greater.  First  of  all 
they  are  lumped  together  in  one  mass,  or  at  best 
divided  into  agglutinative  and  isolating,  and  then 
it  is  asserted  that  the  parent  Aryan  language  had 
passed  through  both  these  two  stages  before  it 
reached  the  inflectional  stage,  and  that  it  was 
during  the  first  of  these  periods — in  other  words, 
during  the  epoch  of  roots — that  it  formed  one  with 
all  the  known  languages  of  the  world.  But,  pass- 
ing by  the  assumption  of  this  graduated  develop- 
ment, which  we  shall  examine  in  a  future  chapter, 
we  may  well  ask  how  such  a  fact,  if  fact  it  is,  can 
possibly  be  known?  Nothing  is  more  deceptive 
and  dangerous,  it  is  agreed  on  all  hands,  than  the 
comparison  of  words  only,  unless  we  are  guided 
by  rules  like  Grimm's  law,  more  especially  when 
the  original  meaning  of  the  words  is  vague  and 
obscure.  In  order  that  our  conclusions  shall  be 
sound,  we  must  begin  by  the  comparison  of  the 
grammar ;  and  in  the  present  instance,  such  a 
comparison  is  excluded  by  the  nature  of  the  case. 
In  fact,  the  whole  attempt  rests  upon  air  ;  its  sole 
basis  is  the  inherited  prejudice  in  favour  of  a 
common  primeval  tongue.  It  cannot  be  urged 
that  the  readiness  to  change  which  distinguishes 

o  o 

savage  dialects,  as  we  saw    in  the  last  chapter, 
gives  any  countenance  to  the  maintenance  of  the 


THE  IDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES.  Ill 

theory.  In  the  first  place,  the  extent  and  nature 
of  the  changes  are  unknown,  and  science  does  not 
allow  us  to  spin  theories  out  of  what  may  be;  in 
the  second  place,  however  great  may  be  the  change 
in  the  vocabulary,  the  manner  in  which  the  mind 
views  objects  and  their  relations,  that  is  to  say, 
the  structure  and  grammar  of  the  language,  remains 
unaltered  ;  in  the  third  place,  war  and  pestilence, 
the  chief  instruments  of  change,  do  not  introduce 
any  new  language,  they  only  bring  about  the 
extension  of  one  idiom  and  the  destruction  or 
diminution  of  another  :  and  lastly,  the  peculiar 
language  of  the  woman  and  of  the  nursery  is  at 
once  conservative  and  confined  to  the  lexicon. 
Where  two  Manipuran  villages  are  unintelligible 
to  one  another,  it  is  on  account  of  changes  in  pro- 
nunciation, in  idiom,  and  in  vocabulary,  not  in 
the  grammatical  forms.  It  may  be  doubted,  more- 
over, whether  we  should  not  always  be  able  to 
recognise  some,  at  least,  of  the  ordinary  terms  of 
daily  life  in  two  dialects  which  were  once  closely 
united,  however  great  their  divergence  may  have 
been.  In  spite  of  the  wide  interval  in  time,  space, 
and  social  relations,  we  may  still  detect  several 
words  of  this  sort  which  are  common  to  Accadian 
and  Basque.  Thus  aria,  "  water,"  and  Basque 
ura ;  eri,  "  city,"  and  Basque  kiria,  seem  to  claim 
relationship.      This  is  still  more  true  of  Accadian 


112  THE  1D0LUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES. 

and  the  semi-barbarous  idioms  of  Northern  Russia 
or  Tartary:  pi,  "  the  ear," '  for  example,  reap- 
pears in  the  Votiak  pel ;  kats,  "  two,"  is  the 
Esthonian  kats ;  dingir,  "  god,"  is  the  Turkish 
tengri,  "  heaven." 

How  far  grammar  is  changeable,  how  far  it 
may  be  affected  from  without,  is  a  matter  which 
we  shall  have  to  investigate  hereafter.  For  the 
present,  we  may  acquiesce  in  the  received  doctrine 
that  the  forms  of  grammar  are  never  borrowed,  even 
though  the  dictionary  may  almost  entirely  consist 
of  foreign  words. 

However,  it  is  not  enough  to  overthrow  the 
arguments  brought  forward  by  the  homogenists  ; 
we  require  positive  instances  on  the  contrary  side ; 
and  these,  I  think,  we  have.  How  else  can  we 
explain  consistently  with  the  given  facts,  such 
phenomena  as  the  ancient  languages  of  Etruria 
and  Lykia?  It  is  said  that  our  inability  to  de- 
cipher the  Etruscan  inscriptions  is  a  disgrace  to 
philological  science.  So  it  would  be  if  they  fell 
within  the  province  of  Comparative  Philology,  if, 
namely,  there  were  any  other  known  language  with 
which  they  could  be  compared.  If  such  does  not 
exist,  the  taunt  is  undeserved.  And  it  seems  to 
me  that  this  is  the  conclusion  to  which  every  un- 
prejudiced thinker  must  be  driven  after  the  vain 
attempts  that  have  been  made  to  find  the  key  iD 


THE  IDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES.  113 

every  possible  or  impossible  language.  The  latest 
decision  is  that  they  belong  to  the  Indo-European 
family,  because  the  language  of  them  is  inflectional; 
but  surely  the  decision  refutes  itself.  Were  they 
Aryan,  they  would  have  been  explained  long  ago. 
If  any  one  thing  distinguishes  an  Aryan  language 
more  than  another,  it  is  its  persistency  of  type, 
its  general  fixity  of  grammatical  form,  its  common 
residuum  of  roots,  which  allow  us  to  determine  its 
character  at  a  glance,  whether  among  the  valleys 
of  the  Caucasus  or  on  the  shores  of  the  Atlantic. 
As  soon  as  the  cuneiform  inscriptions  of  Persia 
could  be  read,  there  was  no  doubt  as  to  the  Aryan 
affinities  of  their  language,  or  its  place  in  the 
Aryan  family,  and  the  Umbrian  dialect  of  the 
Eugubine  Tables,  or  the  idioms  concealed  under 
the  Bunes  of  Northern  Europe,  offer  equally  little 
room  for  hesitation.  The  characteristics  of  the 
European  portion  of  the  family  are  even  more 
distinct ;  and  we  may  well  ask,  whence  did 
the  Etruscan  acquire  its  peculiar  features  ?  We 
know  that  it  descended  into  Italy  from  the  north, 
and  hence,  if  Aryan,  could  only  be  connected 
either  with  Keltic,  Teutonic,  Slavonic,  or  Thracian. 
With  the  three  first  every  one  allows  that  it  has 
nothing  in  common,  in  spite  of  Sir  W.  Betham 
and  Dr  Donaldson  ;  and  little  as  we  know  of  the 
last,  we    know    enough    to   deny   its    kinship    to 

H 


114  THE  IDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES. 

Etruscan.  The  Rhaetian  Alps  are  now  inhabited 
by  a  population  which  speaks  Romansch  and 
Ladin  ;  but  these  are  Romance  dialects,  and  in 
spite  of  many  strange-sounding  Etruscan-like  local 
names — Yelthins,  and  the  like — all  the  researches 
of  Dr  Freund  and  Mr  Ellis  have  failed  to  discover 
a  single  Etruscan  word  in  the  modern  idioms. 
The  Etruscans  may  have  been  the  bronze-men  of 
the  Swiss  lakes,  or  their  predecessors  of  the 
Neolithic  age  whose  pile-dwellings  in  the  north  of 
Austria  have  yielded  wheat  and  coral,  evidences  of 
Eastern  intercourse ;  at  any  rate,  except  in  Italy, 
where  they  had  the  good  fortune  to  come  into 
contact  with  Greek,  civilisation,  they  have  passed 
away  and  left  no  trace  behind  them.  Unlike  the 
Aryans,  they  were  unoriginative  and  receptive ; 
and  not  only  did  they  receive  into  their  vocabulary 
Greek  words  like  fipovrr)  (in  the  pkrunt-ac  of  the 
Pisaurum  inscription)  or  alwv  (in  aiv-il,  "  age  "), 
but  even  the  Latin  inflections  of  a  proper  name, 
Veltkina,  Velt/iinas,  in  the  late  inscription  of 
Perugia.  The  native  inflections,  however,  were  of 
a  very  different  character  ;  the  patronymic  at,  the 
termination  isa  to  express  "  the  wife  of,"  the 
verbal  e  and  he,  and  the  nominal  I,  Is,  ft,  k}  are 
all  non- Aryan  either  in  form  or  use.1 

1  Mr  Isaac  Taylor's  attempt  to  connect  Etruscan  with  the  Ugro- 
Altaic  or  Turanian  class  of  languages  (in  his  "  Etruscan  Researches," 


THE  IDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES.  115 

Unlike  the  Etruscan,  a  few  of  the  shorter 
Lykian  inscriptions  can  be  read,  thanks  to  the 
Greek  legends  attached  to  them.  Here  again  we 
have  an  inflected  language  ;  which  has  accordingly 
been  added  to  the  Aryan  stock,  with  the  support 
of  such  forms  as  prinafatu,  "  he  made,"  by  the 
side  of  prinafutu,  "they  made."  The  nearest 
Aryan  language  fixed  upon  is  Zend ;  but  a  certain 
admixture   of  Semitic  has   also   been   assumed ! 1 

1874)  cannot  be  judged  more  successful  than  the  solutions  of  the 
problem  proposed  by  his  predecessors.  The  evidence  which  he 
brings  forward  from  physiology,  ethnology,  and  mythology,  upsets 
all  endeavours  to  refer  the  Etruscans  to  an  Aryan  origin,  in  agree- 
ment with  craniologists  who  have  long  ago  asserted  that  while  the 
skulls  of  the  lower  classes  found  in  Etruscan  tombs  belong  to  the 
Italic  type,  those  of  the  upper  and  ruling  class  are  of  a  wholly 
different  character  ;  but  the  philological  portion  of  the  book  is  not 
likely  to  convince  any  one. 

Mommsen  in  his  "  History  of  Home  "  (Engl,  transl.,  pp.  189,  249, 
495,  &c),  has  well  pointed  out  how  thoroughly  the  religion,  art, 
and  manners  of  the  Etruscans  contrast  with  all  that  characterises 
an  Aryan  people. 

1  See  Daniel  Sharpe's  appendix  to  Fellows'  "  Account  of  Disco- 
veries in  Lycia,"  pp.  480  sq.  Since  Moriz  Schmidt's  great  work, 
"  Vorstudien  zur  Entzifferung  der  lykischen  Spachforschung,"  with 
its  sequel  the  "  Corpus  of  Lycian  Inscriptions,"  Savelsberg  has 
published  the  first  part  of  "  Beitrage  zur  Entzifferung  d.  Lykis- 
chen Sprachdenkmaler  "  (1874),  in  which  he  tries  to  explain  the 
inscriptions  by  the  help  of  Zend.  Apart,  however,  from  the  ques- 
tion how  an  Iranian  dialect  came  to  be  spoken  in  the  far  west  at  so 
early  a  date,  by  tribes  whose  characteristics  were  but  little  Aryan, 
Fick  has  proved  that  the  languages  of  Asia  Minor  which  are  un- 
questionably Aryan,  belong  to  the  European  and  not  to  the  Iranian 
branch  of  the  family,  and  that  the  stream  of  Indo-European  migra- 
tion did  not  pass  westward  along  the  southern  shores  of  the  Caspian 


116  THE  1D0LUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES. 

The  general  character  of  Lykian,  however,  so  far 
as  we  know  it,  as  displayed  in  the  nature  of  the 
vocabulary  and  grammar,  is  so  clearly  and  widely 
removed  from  that  of  the  Aryan  family,  that  an 
endeavour  has  been  made  by  Mr  Ellis  to  attach  it 
to  certain  of  the  Caucasian  idioms,  but  with 
scant  success.  The  language  is  inflectional,  it  is 
true ;  but  the  inflections  are  not  those  of  the 
Indo-European  group.  If  the  supposition  be 
hazarded  that  it  branched  off  from  this  group,  or 
rather  from  some  remote  ancestor  of  this  group, 
long  before  the  days  to  which  Fick's  dictionary 
and    Schleicher's    grammar  of  the   parent-speech 

until  a  very  late  period.  (See  Appendix.)  After  reading  works 
like  those  of  Corssen  and  Savelsberg,  we  cannot  help  feeling  that 
the  difficulty  of  modern  philology  is  not  to  show  that  a  language  is 
Aryan,  but  that  it  is  not  Aryan.  If  our  spectacles  are  coloured, 
everything  that  we  see  through  them  will  assume  the  same  tint  ; 
and  when  the  Aryan  languages  are  made  the  sole  standard  of  philo- 
logical enquiry,  it  will  be  as  easy  to  find  their  characteristics  in 
Etruscan  or  Lykian  as  it  is  to  read  a  modern  opinion  into  the  writ- 
ings of  some  ancient  author.  Surely  the  philologist  will  gain  more 
credence  for  his  study  if,  instead  of  forcing  every  new  dialect  he 
may  come  across  into  an  "  Aryan  "  mould,  he  frankly  confess  that 
he  has  met  with  a  language  which  the  strict  application  of  the  laws 
of  his  science  will  not  allow  him  to  compare  with  any  other  or  bring 
into  a  pre-arranged  scheme.  Nothing  would  show  more  convinc- 
ingly the  scientific  soundness  of  his  method,  than  the  fact  that 
whereas  a  Runic  or  Persian  cuneiform  inscription  has  only  to  be 
deciphered  to  reveal  its  Aryan  character,  as  soon  as  he  has  to  deal 
with  an  Etruscan  or  Lykian  legend  which  can  be  read  without  the 
slightest  difficulty,  he  comes  at  once  to  what  the  geologist  would 
call  a  fault. 

Had  our  knowledge  of  Basque  to  be  gleaned  from  a  few  inscrip- 


THE  IDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES.  117 

refer,  we  can  only  reply  that  there  is  not  a  single 
fact  to  support  the  belief.  Behind  that  period  we 
know  only  of  the  so-called  period  of  roots,  and 
an  intermediate  epoch  during  which  the  inflections 
of  the  parent-speech  were  being  settled ;  but 
neither  these  roots  nor  these  inflections  are  to  be 
found  in  Lykian.  The  root-period  roust  in  any 
case  have  preceded  the  branching  off  of  Lykian  or 
its  presumed  ancestor :  how  is  it  then  that  the 
Lykian  radicals  are  not  Aryan  ?  Besides,  we  may 
ask,  as  in  the  case  of  Etruscan,  whence  did  Lykian 
come,  and  what  are  the  genealogical  links  by  which 
its  affiliation  to  Aryan  are  to  be  established  ? 

Another    inflectional   language    not    comprised 
in   the    Indo-European    family  is    the    Georgian. 

tious,  I  have  little  doubt  that  our  Aryanising  scholars  would  have 
claimed  the  language  for  our  own  family  of  speech.  Surrounded 
as  the  Basque  is  by  Aryan  dialects,  there  would  have  been  an  a 
'priori  presumption  in  favour  of  comparing  it  with  Keltic  or  Latin. 
Let  us  suppose  that  a  bilingual  inscription  had  informed  us  of  the 
meaning  of  the  following  sentence  :  etchea  suakartu  da  ("  the  house 
has  taken  fire  ") ;  and  that  further — which  is  granting  a  good  deal 
— we  knew  which  of  these  words  were  substantives  and  which  were 
verbs.  Then  our  Basque  Corssen  would  demonstrate  that  etchea 
had  the  same  root  as  oTkos  but  had  lost  (as  in  Greek)  the  initial 
digamma  and  the  final  s  of  the  nominative;  sua  might  be  for 
sura  from  sioar  {aeipios,  creXas,  &c),  and  kartu  is  clearly  the  past 
participle  (again  with  the  final  s  dropped)  of  kri  (creo,  &c),  the  two 
words  together  forming  a  very  Aryan  compound  ;  da  finally  stands 
for  dat,  and  so  the  whole  sentence  is  easily  explained.  Evidently 
Basque  has  followed  the  example  of  Etruscan  in  dispensing  with 
the  terminal  consonants  of  its  flexions ! 


118  THE  IDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES. 

This  is  still  spoken,  and  consequently  we  are  not 
reduced  to  the  allowance  of  forms  and  words  that 
can  be  extracted  from  inscriptions.  The  language 
has  a  fair  antiquity,  if  it  can  be  shown,  as  M. 
Lenormant  believes,  that  the  cuneiform  inscriptions 
of  Van  are  written  in  a  cognate  dialect.  However 
this  may  be,  Georgian  on  its  inflectional  side  dif- 
fers remarkably  from  the  Aryan  in  several  par- 
ticulars. Thus  the  sign  of  the  plural,  bi  or  ni,  is 
inserted  between  the  root  and  the  case-endings, 
as  tkavi,  "  head,"  genitive  t/iavisa,  plural  thavebi, 
thavebisa,  assimilating  the  language  to  the  Tura- 
nian family ;  the  pronouns  have  a  demonstrative 
and  a  copulative  case  ;  the  ordinal  numbers  are 
formed  from  the  cardinals  by  the  prefix  me  ;  and 
the  verbs  incorporate  the  objective  pronouns,  and 
are  able  to  lengthen  themselves  by  the  help  of 
unmeaning  letters.  Like  the  grammar,  the  roots 
of  the  language  show  no  affinity  to  the  Aryan. 
Georgian,  with  its  allied  idioms,  is  sui  generis  ; 
and  if  we  abide  by  the  simple  facts,  instead  of 
following  delusive  analogies  and  prepossessions, 
we  shall  recognise  here  also  a  new  independent 
class  of  lansniafres.     The  same  must  be  said  of  the 

o       o 

Caucasian  dialects.  Anomalous  groups  of  speech 
as  distinct  as  Abasian  and  Mingrelian  exist  side 
by  side  with  an  Aryan  dialect  so  nearly  allied  to 
Persian  as  the  Ossetian  of  the  Iron ;  and  in  spite 


THE  IDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES.  119 

of  attempts  to  compare  them  with  the  dialects  of 
Tibet,  the  Caucasian  group  remains  a  mixture  of 
languages  that  bear  no  resemblance  either  to  one 
another,  or  to  the  other  known  idioms  of  the 
world.  In  the  words  of  the  homogenists  they 
are  still  "unclassified."  The  only  inference 
that  can  be  legitimately  drawn  from  the  facts, 
without  stepping  beyond  them,  is  that  the  moun- 
tain fastnesses  of  the  Caucasus — the  "  snow 
white "  peaks,  as  Isidore  interprets  the  word 
— afforded  refuge  to  the  last  relics  of  many  old 
tongues  which  might  have  otherwise  disappeared, 
just  as  Basque  has  preserved  itself  in  Biscay  and 
Gaelic  in  the  Highlands.  The  social  revolutions 
to  which  barbarous  and  semi-barbarous  tribes  are 
exposed,  particularly  through  their  limited  num- 
bers and  the  reverses  of  war,  more  than  account 
for  the  entire  loss  of  languages ;  and  when  we 
consider  the  great  antiquity  of  man,  as  revealed 
by  geology,  by  ethnology,  by  glottology  itself, 
together  with  the  vast  extent  of  area  over  which 
he  had  spread  himself  at  a  remote  period  in  scat- 
tered isolated  bands,  with  no  protection  against  the 
beasts  of  the  forest  except  miserable  chipped  flints, 
no  protection  against  the  excessive  cold  of  winter 
except  the  skins  of  wild  animals  and  the  shelter 
of  a  cave,  our  sole  wonder  must  be,  not  at  the 
diversity  of  languages,  but  at  the  paucity  of  the 


120  THE  IDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES. 

wrecks  of  ancient  speech  that  still  remain  spread 
over  the  face  of  the  earth.  The  modern  races  of 
mankind  are  but  the  selected  residuum  of  the 
infinitely  varied  species  that  have  passed  away : 
the  same  surely  will  hold  good  of  language ;  and 
we  ought  no  longer  to  be  surprised  at  the  multi- 
tudinous variety  of  dialects  found  in  North  and 
South  America,  in  Australia,  in  the  islands  of  the 
ocean,  or  in  the  continents  of  the  Old  World,  but 
be  content  to  believe  that  they  represent  but  a 
small  part  of  the  extinct  essays  and  types  of 
language  which  have  gone  to  form  the  language- 
world  of  the  present  day,  like  the  numberless  types 
that  nature  has  lavished  since  the  first  appearance 
of  life  upon  the  globe.  Manifold  must  have  been 
the  earliest  attempts  to  form  articulate  speech,  to 
utilise  the  mouth  for  the  purpose  of  supplying  daily 
wants.  Man  is  a  social  animal ;  comparative  law 
and  comparative  ethnology  first  introduce  him 
leading  the  communistic  life  of  bees,  out  of  which 
the  idea  of  individualism  grew  up  with  the  pro- 
gress of  civilisation.  Intercourse  by  means  of 
gestures  and  signs  could  not  long  have  been  ade- 
quate to  the  needs  of  the  community;  the  hands 
were  wanted  for  other  purposes,  even  if,  as  Helve- 
tius  held,  it  was  through  them  that  man  became 
man  ;  and  accordingly  the  natural  powers  of  pro- 
ducing sound  that  lay   in  the   voice  would  have 


THE  IDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES.  121 

been  employed  to  procure  what  one  man  required 
from  another.  Whether  or  not,  however,  language 
was  at  first  communistic,  like  everything  else,  and 
not  individual,  is  a  question  which  we  have  no 
means  of  determining.  This  much  is  clear,  that  at 
a  certain  period  of  social  life,  the  impulse  towards 
the  expression  of  articulate  speech  must  have  be- 
come irresistible,  and  primitive  man  would  have 
delighted  in  displaying  his  newly  found  power,  as 
much  as  the  modern  savage  or  the  modern  child, 
the  best  representatives  we  now  have  of  primitive 
man.  The  child  is  never  tired  of  repeating  the 
words  it  has  learned ;  the  savage  and  the  school- 
boy of  inventing  new  ones.  Indeed  the  slang  of  the 
school  is  the  reaction  of  the  still  unextinguished 
feelings  of  primeval  barbarism  against  the  re- 
straints of  civilisation,  and  the  strange  inter- 
jectional  "  tongues  "  of  religious  enthusiasm  are 
the  return,  under  the  pressure  of  strong  emotion, 
to  the  original  state  of  productive  energy.  After 
all,  the  barrier  between  interjectional  utterance 
and  articulate  speech  is  very  slight,  and  it  must 
have  been  slighter  when  both  were  but  the  out- 
burst of  natural  feelings  and  the  expression 
of  wants  differing  in  degree  only,  and  not 
in  kind.  Can  the  emotion  that  prompts  the 
savage  to  shout  be  said  really  to  differ  from  the 
sense  of  power  and  life  that  makes  him  turn  his 


122  THE  IDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES. 

shout  into  a  significant  word  ?  In  both  the  object 
is  the  same  ;  in  both  the  means  of  attaining  that 
object  by  the  use  of  the  lungs  is  the  same.  Surely 
language  originated  in  the  desire  to  speak,  in  the 
pleasure  felt  in  the  very  act  of  inventing  sounds  ; 
and  to  limit  such  invention,  such  desires,  to  a 
single  body  of  men,  is  as  reasonable  as  to  hold 
that  the  manifold  songs  of  different  species  of 
birds  have  all  developed  out  of  some  original  one, 
or  at  most  out  of  two  or  three. 

If  there  is  one  lesson  that  modern  savage  life 
teaches  more  emphatically  than  another,  it  is  that 
in  a  so-called  natural  state  separation  and  hostility 
are  the  rule.  Mankind  live  apart  in  numberless 
small  groups  or  families,  which  have  no  con- 
nection, except  perhaps  a  hostile  one,  with  one 
another,  and  which  continually  tend,  unless 
checked  by  other  circumstances,  to  become  nar- 
rower and  smaller.  We  see  them,  too,  in  a  con- 
stant state  of  flux  and  migration,  exposed  to  all 
the  dangers  of  famine,  disease,  and  want  of  wives. 
Language,  the  product  and  mirror  of  society, 
faithfully  reflects  this  state  of  things.  In  Colchis, 
Pliny  says  (vi.  5),  there  were  more  than  300 
dialects.  Sagard  in  1631  states,  that  among  the 
Hurons  of  North  America,  not  only  is  the  same 
language  hardly  to  be  found  in  two  villages,  but 
even  in  two  families  in  the  same  village,  while 


THE  IDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES.  123 

each  of  these  multitudinous  dialects  is  changing 
every  day. 1  Waldeck  asserts  that  a  dictionary  com- 
piled by  Jesuit  missionaries  in  Central  America 
became  useless  within  ten  years ;  while  Captain 
Gordon  tells  us  that  "  some  "  of  the  Manipuran 
dialects  "  are  spoken  by  no  more  than  thirty  or 
forty  families,  yet  [are]  so  different  from  the  rest 
as  to  be  unintelligible  to  the  nearest  neighbour- 
hood." Spix  and  Martius  bear  the  same  testi- 
mony in  regard  to  the  languages  of  South 
America,  in  reference  to  which  Humboldt 2  writes, 
that  together  with  a  great  analogy  of  physical 
constitution,  "  a  surprising  variety  of  languages 
is  observed  among  nations  of  the  same  origin, 
and  which  European  travellers  scarcely  dis- 
tinguished   by    their    features."3     Now    we   may 

1  Mr  Trumbull  points  out,  however  ("  On  the  best  method  of 
studying  the  American  Languages,"  p.  11),  that  Sagard  describes 
the  instability  of  language  among  the  French  as  being  nearly  as 
great  as  among  the  Hurons  ;  while  "  Sagard's  very  imperfect  dic- 
tionary of  this  unstable  language,  200  years  or  more  after  it  was 
compiled,  enabled  Duponceau  to  make  himself  understood  without 
apparent  difficulty  by  the  Wyandots,  a  remnant  of  the  lost  nation 
of  the  Hurons." 

2  "  Travels  in  South  America  "  (Engl,  transl,  i.  p.  298). 

3  A  very  instructive  account  is  given  by  Washington  Matthews, 
in  his  "  Grammar  and  Dictionary  of  the  Language  of  the  Hidatsa  " 
(1874),  of  four  tribes  of  agricultural  Indians,  numerous  and  pros- 
perous, found  by  Lewis  and  Clarke  when  they  ascended  the  Mis- 
souri in  1804.  The  four  tribes  then  inhabited  eight  permanent 
towns  in  the  Upper  Missouri  Valley,  west  of  the  Dakota  nation. 
All  now  left  of  them  is  one  small  village  of  2500  souls  at  Fort 


124  THE  IDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES. 

fairly  take  modern  savage  life  as  representing  the 
condition  of  man  when  he  first  comes  under  the 
notice  of  philology,  remembering,  however,  that 
all  the  traits  we  have  just  been. alluding  to  must 
have  been  exaggerated  at  that  early  period,  when 
the  human  race  was  on  a  lower  level  of  culture 
than  the  most  degraded  barbarian  of  to-day,  and 
necessarily  existed  in  scantier  numbers.  But  we 
need  not  even  go  to  savage  life  to  exemplify  what 
is  the  normal  condition  of  spoken  language. 
Every  dialect  that  we  meet  with  gives  us  evidence 
against  the  actual  reality  of  those  ideal  centres  to 
which  we  would  relegate  the  various  languages  of 
the  world.  Dialects  and  diversity  are  the  natural 
order  of  things  ;  and  as  soon  as  the  coercive  hand 
of  a  literary  civilisation  is  taken  off  a  language,  it 
at  once  breaks  out  into  a  plentiful  crop  of  dialects. 

Berthold,  Dakota.  The  four  tribes  are  reduced  to  three,  one  hav- 
ing been  so  decimated  by  smallpox  in  1S38  that  the  survivors 
joined  the  Hidatsa,  and  adopted  its  chief,  traditions,  and  customs. 
Though  the  three  tribes  inhabit  one  village  and  have  been  near 
neighbours  for  at  least  100  years,  in  peace  and  intimacy,  freely 
intermarrying,  each  has  a  distinct  language.  The  languages  do  not 
tend  to  coalesce,  and  only  a  remote  likeness  can  be  traced  between 
two  of  them,  the  third  having  absolutely  nothing  in  common.  To 
make  the  survival  of  these  three  tongues  side  by  side  more  surpris- 
ing, almost  every  member  of  each  tribe  understands  the  language 
of  the  others,  so  that  "  it  is  not  an  uncommon  thing  to  hear  a  dia- 
logue carried  on  in  two  languages,  oue  person,  for  instance,  ques- 
tioning in  Madan,  and  the  other  answering  back  in  Grosventre, 
and  vice  versa.''  Moreover  many  of  them  are  acquainted  with  the 
Dakota  tongue,  and  all  understand  the  language  of  signs. 


THE  IDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES.  125 

Thus  in  Greece  alone  there  are  (or  were  a  few 
years  back)  no  less  than  seventy  different  dialects. 
Many  of  these,  no  doubt,  were  new  creations ; 
that  is,  they  have  originated  among  the  isolated 
communities  of  Greece  since  the  tenth  century, 
testifying  to  the  perpetual  creativeness  of  lan- 
guage when  left  alone.  But  others  will  go  back 
beyond  the  rise  of  the  literary  language,  which  is 
but  one  out  of  many  dialects,  though  selected  by 
circumstances  as  the  standard  of  the  rest.  Dialects 
are  the  material  out  of  which  the  idioms  of  the 
court  and  of  the  book-writer  have  been  formed ; 
they  reach  back  as  far  as  Comparative  Philology 
allows  us  to  carry  our  investigations.  We  may, 
indeed,  conceive  of  a  time  when,  in  the  Aryan 
family,  for  instance,  they  did  not  yet  exist,  and 
picture  to  ourselves  some  parent-speech  which 
held  them,  as  it  were,  in  embryo ;  but  we  must 
not  forget  that  such  a  parent-speech  is  altogether 
ideal ;  that,  so  far  as  our  data  go,  they  presuppose 
the  existence  of  dialects,  and  that  the  attempt  to 
explain  the  laws  of  lautverschiebung  by  original 
indeterminate  sounds,  out  of  which  the  various 
letters  which  correspond  to  each  other  in  the 
several  branches  of  our  race  were  derived,  although 
possible,  is  neither  demonstrable  nor  satisfactory. 
In  fact,  as  soon  as  a  language  ceases  to  be  con- 
fined  to  a   single  household,  it  breaks   out  into 


126  THE  IDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES. 

varieties.  Every  family  has  its  peculiar  pronun- 
ciation, its  favourite  words.  And  the  period  in 
which  language  first  becomes  an  object  of  study 
to  Glottology  is  one  of  scattered  and  isolated 
communities.  How  these  first  acquired  articulate 
speech  is  not  for  the  glottologist  to  ascertain  ; 
for  him  the  origin  of  language  means  the  analysis 
of  the  words  that  we  at  present  possess,  the 
determination  of  the  monuments  that  have  come 
down  to  us.  This  much,  however,  is  clear  ;  that 
the  beginning  of  articulate  speech,  the  beginning 
of  that  language  with  which  he  has  to  deal,  is  not 
coeval  with  the  physiological  beginning  of  man  ; 
that  it  is  a  product  of  society ;  and  that  as  society 
in  those  primitive  times  was  infinitely  numerous, 
so  also  were  languages.  To  derive  one  language 
from  another  is  to  derive  one  community  from  an- 
other ;  and  where  we  find  all  living  at  once  sepa- 
rately and  simultaneously,  without  any  mark  of 
priority  or  derivation,  such  a  procedure  can  obtain 
no  scientific  sanction.  We  may  make  ideal  centres, 
like  the  ideal  types  of  natural  history,  to  which  to 
refer  the  different  members  of  one  or  two  so-called 
"  families ;  "  but  these  centres  will  ever  remain 
ideal  :  for  the  philologist  dialects  exist  from  the 
beginning.  Nor  can  we  exclude  the  possibility 
that  some  at  least  of  these  dialects  never  had 
philologically  any  connection  with  each  other;  but 


THE  IDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES.  1  27 

that  a  common  climate,  common  food,  and  com- 
mon conditions  of  life  produced  similar  linguistic 
phenomena  among  the  isolated   communities  of  a 
given  area,  and  that  a  similarity  of  germ  neces- 
sarily brought  about  a  similarity  of  development. 
The    physical    descent    of   certain    tribes  from  a 
single  household  must  be  kept  carefully   distinct 
from  any  philological  descent,    since,   as   far  as 
Glottology  is  concerned,   language  is  posterior  to 
the  physical  beginnings  of  man.     When  we  con- 
sider the  immense  multitude   of   savage   idioms, 
and  the   changes  which  these  are  always  under- 
going, we  may   form   some  idea   of   the  infinite 
number   of  tongues  that  have  been  spoken  since 
the     first    epoch     of    language,    and    have     left 
no   trace  behind    them.      Here  and  there   a  few 
have  been  stereotyped  and  preserved  by  a  happy 
selection ;  here  and  there  relics  of  others  may  be 
detected  ;  but  the  large  majority  have  perished  more 
completely  than  the  animals  of  geological  antiquity. 
When   mankind  first  awakened  to  linguistic  con- 
sciousness, each  isolated  community  had  its  own 
means  of  intercommunication,  its  own   dialect  if 
you    like ;  and    from  a    combination    of  some   of 
these   which   lived    near    one    another,    or    were 
brought  together  by  war  or  migration,  the  dialects 
which    make    up    a    "  family "    were    originated. 
Instead   of  deriving  the  latter  from    a   common 


128  THE  IDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES. 

ancestor,  a  common  centre,  the  truer  account 
would  be  that  they  were  slowly  evolved  out  of  an 
amalgamation  of  pre-existing  dialects.  Even  the 
imaginary  root-period  of  Aryan  speech  cannot 
disguise  this ;  we  need  not  go  further  than  Greek 
to  discover  roots  which  exist  in  no  other  cognate 
dialect,  or  which,  like  payis,  criyr),  Oeaofiai,  rpefjuw, 
vecj)f)o%  re/jLvco  are  found  but  in  one  or  two.  How 
can  this  be  explained  upon  the  hypothesis  that 
all  the  linguistic  material  of  the  Indo-European 
tongues  has  been  developed  out  of  one  original 
common  stock-in-trade  of  radicals  ? 

Indeed,  if  the  history  of  language  shows  any- 
thing clearly,  it  is  the  exact  converse  of  the  theory 
usually  maintained  on  this  subject.  The  tendency 
of  time  is  to  unify  what  was  originally  separate, 
not  to  multiply  what  was  originally  one.  Every 
war  among  savages  which  ends  by  the  subjugation 
of  a  tribe  and  the  extinction  of  its  language  jus- 
tifies this  assertion.  But  its  full  truth  is  not  seen 
until  we  come  to  examine  the  records  of  civilisa- 
tion— that  is,  until  we  pass  beyond  the  period  of 
barbarism  in  which  language  arose.  Were  the 
ordinary  hypothesis  correct,  barbarism  would  show 
union,  civilisation  disunion.  But  the  contrary  is 
the  case.  All  the  social  conditions  of  civilised 
life  tend  to  break  down  dialects,  to  assimilate 
languages,   and  to   create  a  common  medium   of 


THE  IDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES.  129 

intercourse.  The  Macedonian  Empire  spread  a 
common  language  through  the  East ;  the  Roman 
Empire  still  more  effectually  stamped  out  the 
various  idioms  of  the  West,  until  a  second  period 
of  linguistic  disunion  was  brought  about  by  the 
return  of  barbarism  with  the  invasion  of  the  Ger- 
man nations.  The  Church  alone,  the  sole  repre- 
sentative of  civilisation,  continued  to  have  a  com- 
mon language.  In  fact,  the  more  intense  and 
extended  the  civilisation,  the  more  impossible  is  it 
to  keep  up  a  diversity  of  tongues.  The  one  unites, 
the  other  disjoins.  A  common  government,  a 
common  literature,  a  common  history,  a  common 
law,  all  require  a  common  language.  The  mate- 
rial triumphs  of  the  present  century — the  railway, 
the  steamer,  and  the  telegraph,  with  increased 
facilities  of  travelling  and  intercommunication — 
all  emphatically  tend  in  the  same  direction.  Above 
all,  the  same  holds  good  of  commerce,  the  mainstay 
of  our  modern  civilisation,  which  is  gradually 
absorbing  the  whole  world,  and  carrying  with  it, 
wherever  it  goes,  the  languages  of  the  chief 
trading  nations.  "  One  coinage  and  one  lan- 
guage "  is  a  cry  now  heard  often  enough.  Small 
nations,  like  the  Dutch,  find  it  absolutely  neces- 
sary to  be  bilingual,  if  not  trilingual ;  and  the 
children  in  the  schools  are  regularly  taught  to 
speak    some    other    language   besides    their   own, 

I 


130  THE  IDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES. 

commercial  reasons  making  English  especially 
favoured.  Politics,  too,  look  the  same  way.  The 
desire  of  unification,  which  has  been  satisfied  in 
Italy  and  Germany,  aided  by  compulsory  educa- 
tion, is  fast  destroying  the  local  dialects  of  Europe  ; 
and  already  the  vanguard  of  democratic  socialism 
and  sameness  have  disowned  the  distinctions  of 
language,  just  as  they  have  disowned  the  distinc- 
tions of  race.  Such  is  the  end  of  that  cry  of 
nationalities  which  shook  Europe  so  short  a  time 
ago  :  in  the  midst  of  their  successes,  the  migra- 
tion of  his  countrymen  to  America  is  practically 
declaiming  the  words  of  Arndt,  "  So  weit  die 
Deutsche  Zunge  klingt;"  and  the  Teutonic  popu- 
lation of  Alsace  has  preferred  exile  to  reunion  with 
Germany.  In  spite  of  the  efforts  of  philologists 
Welsh  is  rapidly  disappearing  from  Wales,  and 
Gaelic  from  Scotland ;  while  German  alone  is 
heard  in  the  schools  of  the  Engadine,  and  French 
in  the  schools  of  Brittany.  The  fact  that  the 
revival  of  Flemish  has  been  the  work  of  the  liter- 
ary classes,  shows  its  artificial  and  hollow  charac- 
ter, and  is  of  itself  a  proof  how  thoroughly  the 
attempt  is  contrary  to  the  spirit  of  the  age,  when 
the  language  is  preserved,  not  on  account  of  its 
utility — the  sole  foundation  of  the  continuance  of 
a  lan£ua£e — but  because  it  is  regarded  as  a  lite- 
rary  curiosity,  a  philological   plaything.     The  cry 


THE  IDOLUM  OF  PRIMEVAL  CENTRES.  131 

of  nationalities  was  really  a  backward  step ;  it 
was  the  reaction  against  the  bourgeoisie  of  the 
French  revolution,  and  a  revolt  against  the  old- 
world  diplomacy  that  parcelled  out  anew  the  em- 
pire of  Napoleon. 

To  sum  up  :  Instead  of  maintaining  the  exist- 
ence of  a  few  original  centres  of  speech,  the  truer 
view  would  be  that  languages  at  first  were  infin- 
itely numerous  and  diversified,  being  the  natural 
and  spontaneous  outcome  of  the  powers,  the  feel- 
ings, and  the  needs  of  primitive  man,  just  as 
much  as  the  formation  of  flint  tools  or  the  orna- 
mentation of  sun-baked  pottery,  and  that  they 
have  gradually  diminished  and  disappeared  through 
the  course  of  ages  by  a  long  process  of  natural 
selection,  civilisation  finally  threatening  them 
with  utter  extinction,  and  tending  to  reduce  their 
number  to  the  smallest  possible  cipher,  if  not 
finally  to  one  universal  medium  of  intercourse 
between  man  and  man. 


LIBRARY  N 
LLIFO]        \. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE   THEORY   OF   THREE   STAGES   OF   DEVELOPMENT   IN   THE 
HISTORY   OF    LANGUAGE. 

We  are  often  told  that  one  of  the  chief  results  of 
the  science  of  language  has  been  to  show  a  con- 
tinuous and  regular  development  in  the  history  of 
speech  :  first  an  isolating  stage,  or  period  of  roots, 
when  the  position  of  the  word  alone  denoted  the 
meaning  of  a  sentence  without  the  assistance  of 
any  (auxiliary)  signs  of  relationship  ;  then  an 
agglutinative  stage,  when  these  auxiliary  marks 
were  added,  each,  however,  remaining  a  fully 
significant,  independent  word  ;  and  lastly,  an  in- 
flectional stage,  when  the  auxiliary  marks  have 
lost  all  independent  meaning,  and  have  become  so 
many  inseparable  signs.  The  final  stage  has  a 
further  tendency  to  analysis  :  the  inflections  are 
broken  down,  and  the  decayed  compounds  are  used, 
as  in  English,  to  express  singly  and  independently, 
by  the  aid  of  position,  the  various  relations  into 
which  a  sentence  may  be  resolved.  The  analy- 
tical period  differs  from   the  isolating,  in  that  in 


THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT.       133 

the  latter  each  root  is  a  sort  of  germ  which  con- 
tains within  itself  every  kind  of  mode  and  rela- 
tion, while  in  the  former  the  germs  have  been 
broken  up  into  their  elements,  and  these  are  re- 
presented by  words,  eaoh  of  which  is  a  relic  of  a 
preceding  era  of  inflection.1  The  three  stages  have 
been  supposed  to  answer  to  the  solitary  individual 
life  the  first  men  are  imagined  to  have  led — con- 
trary, however,  to  the  communistic  beginnings 
which  comparative  inquiries  now  assign  to  them 
— to  the  family  and  tribal  life  of  nomads,  and  to 
the  social  life  of  the  civilised  citizen.  Chinese  is 
taken  as  an  illustration  of  the  first,  Turkish  of  the 
second,  and  Sanskrit  of  the  third. 

I  have  said,  in  a  former  chapter,  that  the  start- 
ing-point of  glottology,  the  ultimate  fact  with 
which  it  has  to  deal,  is  thought  expressed  in 
speech.  This  is  more  accurate  than  the  ordinary 
view,  which  makes  philological  science  begin  with 


1  The  difference  between  the  analytical  and  isolating  forms  of 
language  is  well  exemplified  by  Schleicher's  illustration  in  his 
"  Languages  of  Europe  "  (p.  51).  A  sentence  which  in  English 
runs  thus,  "  The  king  spoke  :  0  sage  !  since  thou  dost  not  count  a 
thousand  miles  far  to  come,  wilt  thou  not  also  have  brought  some- 
thing for  the  welfare  of  my  kingdom  ?  "  when  expressed  in  Chinese 
presents  the  following  unintelligible  form  :  "  King  speak  :  Sage  ! 
not  for  a  thousand  mile  and  come  ;  also  will  have  use  gain  me  king- 
dom, hey  ?  "  Pigeon-English  is  a  good  instance  of  an  attempt  on 
the  part  of  a  Chinaman  to  enter  into  the  mysteries  of  European 
thought. 


134      THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES   OF  DEVELOPMENT. 

the  word.  We  may  ask,  "  What  is  a  word?  "and 
the  only  answer  we  shall  get  which  will  cover  all 
words  alike  is,  "  Meaning  combined  with  form." 
This  is  nearly  the  same  as  saying  that  it  is  thought 
expressed  in  speech ;  but  then  what  becomes  of 
such  words  as  auxiliaries  and  conjunctions  ?  It  is 
certainly  difficult  to  detect  much  meaning  in  such 
particles  as  "  and  "  and  "  or  ;"  and  logic  tells  us 
that  the  copula  "  is  "  represents  simply  the  act  of 
mental  comparison.  Again,  are  interjections  to 
be  considered  words  ?  In  this  case  it  would  be 
very  hard  to  define  the  significations  of  "  oh  !  '" 
or  "  alas  !  "  By  a  word,  therefore,  a  definite  con- 
ception must  be  intended  to  be  understood ;  and  a 
conception  must  be  subject  to  the  relations  of  time 
and  space.  Now  every  conception  is  the  result  of 
a  judgment,  the  decision  that  such  and  such  par- 
ticulars are  compatible  with  one  another  :  when 
expressed  in  language,  it  is  the  short-hand  form  of 
a  sentence  or  proposition.  A  difficulty,  however, 
arises  in  the  case  of  the  verb.  The  verb,  as  its 
name  implies,  is  pre-eminently  the  subject  of  phi- 
lology :  it  is  emphatically  the  word  ;  and  yet  we  can- 
not say  that  we  have  any  very  definite  conception 
of  its  meaning  in  the  sense  that  we  have  of  the  noun. 
The  fact  is,  that  the  idea  we  form  to  ourselves  of 
a  verb  is  an  idea  of  action,  whether  that  is  re- 
stricted to  a  definite  single  act  or  extended  to  an 


THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT.       135 

indefinite  succession  of  acts.  But  in  either  case, 
the  conception  of  action  implies  the  conception 
also  of  a  subject  and  of  an  object ;  and  neuter 
verbs,  which  throw  the  object  into  the  background, 
or  even  seem  to  obscure  it  altogether,  are  as  rare 
in  an  early  period  of  language  as  verbs  of  a  purely 
abstract  signification.  Hence  we  find  the  middle 
voice,  where  the  subject  is  also  an  object,  pre- 
ceding the  passive  ;  while  languages  of  a  more 
primitive  type  than  the  Aryan,  such  as  the 
Accadian,  the  Basque,  or  the  Mordvinian,  insert  the 
object-pronoun  between  the  subject-pronoun  and 
the  verb,  even  in  cases  where  it  seems  to  us  super- 
fluous ;  just  as  the  Algonquin  has  no  verbs  to 
express  "  to  be  "  and  "  to  have,"  l  or  the  Semitic 
languages  preferred  to  denote  existence  by  the 
paraphrase,  "  something  is  an  object  to  him." 
Analysis,  again,  is  leading  us  to  the  conclusion  that 
the  prepositions  are,  for  the  most  part,  old  substan- 
tives, while  even  the  conjunctions,  such  as  and,  the 
Greek  in,  and  Sanskrit  ati,2  or  que  (Greek  re, 
kcu,  Sanskrit  did),  were  originally  demonstratives. 
Thought  must  have  a  beginning  and  an  end  as 
well  as  a  middle,  and  to  seize  upon  one  of  these 

1  See    Trumbull    u  On   some    Mistaken  Notions   of   Algonquin 
Grammar,"  p.  9. 

2  According  to  Weber,  from  the  root  at,  "  to  go  ; "  hence  origi- 
nally "  a  going  further." 


136      THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT. 

alone  apart  from  the  rest  as  the  starting-point  of 
Glottology  is  manifestly  absurd.  It  would  be  as 
if  geology  were  to  concern  itself  with  the  individual 
pebbles  of  a  sea-beach,  and  endeavour  to  draw 
conclusions  from  them,  instead  of  comparing  them 
one  with  the  other,  and  with  the  texture  of  the 
neighbouring  rocks.  Language  is  based  upon  the 
sentence,  not  upon  the  isolated  word,  for  the  latter 
can  mean  nothing  except  interjectional  vagueness. 
It  is  merely  a  bundle  of  syllables  and  letters,  or 
rather  of  animal  sounds ;  merely  the  creation  of 
the  grammarian  and  the  lexicographer.  To  become 
language,  it  must  embody  thought  and  emotion  ; 
it  must  express  a  judgment.1 


1  Waitz  has  arrived  at  the  same  conclusion  as  far  hack  as  1858, 
in  his  "  Anthropologic  der  Naturvolker,"  vol.  i.  He  says  {Enyl. 
transl.,  p.  241),  "We  do  not  think  in  words,  but  in  sentences  ; 
hence  we  may  assert  that  a  liviug  language  consists  of  sentences 
not  of  words.  But  a  sentence  is  formed  not  of  single  independent 
words,  but  of  words  which  refer  to  one  another  in  a  particular 
manner,  like  the  corresponding  thought,  which  does  not  consist  of 
single  independent  ideas,  but  of  such  as,  connected,  form  a  whole, 
and  determine  one  another  mutually."  He  goes  on  to  point  out 
that  a  sentence  is  conceived  of  as  a  whole  (or  complete  picture)  by 
the  mind,  the  sensible  image  of  an  action  being  immediately  re- 
produced in  thought,  and  that  consequently  the  words  by  which  it 
is  expressed,  if  unconnected  with  one  another,  would  convey  but 
little  meaning.  Such  unconnected  words  are  arrived  at  by  a  pro- 
cess of  conscious  analysis.  May  we  not  say,  then,  that  the  incor- 
porating languages  of  America,  in  which  an  individual  action  is 
represented  by  a  single  sentence,  the  component  parts  of  which 
have  not  Veen  isolated  and  assigned  an  abstract  sense,  exhibit  a 
lower  grade  of  consciousness  than  the  more  analytic,  agglutinative 


THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT.       137 

It  is  the  conception  of  the  sentence,  there- 
fore, wherein  languages  will  resemble  or  differ 
from  one  another.  In  Chinese  the  sentence  is 
summed  up  in  a  single  word ;  the  mind  has  not 
yet  clearly  marked  off  its  several  parts,  and 
anatysed  what  we  may  call  the  early  communism 
of  speech.  This  is  done  in  Turanian ;  but  here 
the  sentence  is  of  the  most  simple  character,  each 
portion  being  of  the  same  hue  and  force.  It  is 
not  till  we  come  to  the  inflectional  stage  that  the 
parts  are  duly  subordinated ;  co-ordination  of 
function  gives  place  to  a  fitting  correlation,  and 
makes  possible  the  long  compounds  of  Sanskrit, 
or  the  exquisite  periods  of  a  Greek  writer.  In 
the  terms  of  the  Hegelian  philosophy,  thought  first 
lies  implicit,  indetermined,  and  confused,  in  a 
kind  of  rough  block  ;  then  it  becomes  determined, 
but  by  means  of  an  opposition  which  equalises  the 
contradictory    elements ;    and    the    opposition    is 


languages  ?  From  this  point  of  view  flection  would  belong  to  an 
earlier  stage  of  development  than  agglutination,  and  a  transition 
from  the  agglutinative  to  the  inflectional  conception  of  the  sentence 
would  be  a  retrograde  movement  wholly  inconceivable  in  the  races 
which  speak  inflected  languages.  We  can  thus  explain  how  it  is 
on  the  one  side  that  agglutinative  dialects,  though  often  adopting 
inflectional  forms,  never  become  inflectional  (i.e.,  never  express  an 
idea  by  an  inflected  sentence),  and  on  the  other  side  that  inflectional 
dialects,  though  presenting  numberless  specimens  of  agglutination, 
yet  end  by  assimilating  these  to  the  general  inflective  character  of 
the  language. 


138      THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT. 

finally  removed  by  making  each  term  supplement 
the  other,  according  to  the  laws  of  a  relative  sub- 
ordination. But  the  conception  which  underlies 
each  form  of  the  sentence,  each  stage  in  the 
development  of  language,  is  as  essentially  differ- 
ent as  the  idea  or  principle  which  lay  at  the 
bottom  of  the  national  life  of  those  races  who, 
according  to  Hegel,  have  successively  worked  out 
the  problem  of  history.  Regarding  them  from 
the  point  of  view  of  science  or  philosophy,  we  can 
see  how  these  stages  stand  related  to  each  other  in 
the  order  of  thought;  but  we  do  not  see  how 
the  gulf  between  them  could  practically  have  been 
bridged  over,  or  how  it  is  psychologically  possible 
that  the  same  race  which  conceived  its  sentence 
as  consisting  of  co-ordinate  elements  could  also 
have  been  potentially  able  to  conceive  it  as  con- 
sisting of  subordinate  elements.  There  is  no 
question  here  of  growth  or  evolution.  The  Aryan 
languages  may  or  may  not  have  originally  been  in 
a  state  not  very  unlike  that  of  agglutination,  the 
Finnic  group  may  or  may  not  have  come  to  offer 
many  of  the  phenomena  of  inflection  :  the  agglu- 
tinative idioms  are  still  agglutinative,  and  the 
Aryan  family,  so  far  as  Glottology  has  cognisance 
of  it,  has  always  been  inflective.  We  may  resolve 
the  Aryan  verb  into  root,  or  base,  and  pronoun,  but 
we  can  never  point  out  a  time  when  the  two  were 


THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT.       139 

of  full,  equal,  independent  power;  we  may  show 
that  the  suffix  tar,  whence  we  get  father,  mother, 
and  numberless  other  words  of  agency,  is  the  root 
which  means  "  to  cross,"  or  "get  through"  (with 
a  thing),  as  in  trans  and  through,  but  we  prove  no 
more   than   when   we    demonstrate   that   the   last 
syllable  of  kingdom  is  the  same  word  that  we  get 
in  our  doom  and  the   Greek  Oe'fia,   or  that  know- 
ledge and  wed-lock  are  compounded  with  the  old 
English    lac,  "  sport,"   "gift,"  the    Gothic   Idiks. 
The  Teutonic  languages  were  inflective  before  these 
suffixes  were  added,  and  they  remained  so  even  while 
these  suffixes  still  retained  their  original  indepen- 
dent power.      In  fact,  had  they  not  already  been 
inflectional,   the  suffixes  would  not  have  become 
so,   but  have   continued   agglutinative   and   inde- 
pendent,   since    mere    outward    phonetic    change 
cannot  produce  an  internal  mental  change,  and, 
without    the    inflectional    instinct   to   precede    it, 
cannot  alter  the  manner  in  which  the  sentence  and 
its  several  parts   are  regarded  by  the  mind.     In 
the  same  way,  however  nearly  some  of  the  Tura- 
nian dialects  may  approach  to   the  perfection  of 
inflectional  speech,  the  character  of  the  language 
still   remains    fundamentally    agglutinative.     The 
wearing  of  time  may,  indeed,  have  wasted  away 
the  personal  terminations  of  the  Votiak  verb  adzo, 
Ci  I  see,"  adzi,  "  I  have  seen,"  or  even  have  acted 


140      THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT. 

upon  the  earliest-known  Accadian,  so  that  the 
origin  of  the  participial  affix  a  is  obscured,  and 
the  termination  of  the  third  person  plural  of  the 
past  tense  in  -es  and  -us  exhibits  but  slight  trace 
of  the  primitive  mes,  u  many/'  out  of  which  it 
arose  ;  but  the  example  thus  accidentally  set  has 
not  been  followed,  and  the  most  "  Europeanised  " 
of  the  Turanian  tongues  keeps  true  to  its  original 
conception  of  objects  and  actions.  Time  will  do 
much,  but  it  will  not  bring  about  an  entire  change 
in  the  mode  of  thought,  in  the  whole  constitution 
of  the  mind,  through  the  external  accident  of 
phonetic  decay.  We,  whose  idea  of  language  and 
manner  of  viewing  things  in  thought  belong  alto- 
gether to  the  inflectional  stage,  naturally  fancy 
that  it  will  be  with  other  races  as  it  is  with  us, 
and  that  when  certain  antecedents  are  given,  the 
phenomena  of  inflection  will  necessarily  follow. 
But  how  is  it  possible  for  one  to  whom  objects 
and  actions  and  relations  are  all  equally  concrete 
and  important  to  be  brought  to  regard  them  other- 
wise, at  all  events  without  the  help  of  education? 
Can  we  expect  a  "  Principia  "  from  the  Negro,  or 
an  "  Organon  "  from  the  Arab?  The  Ethiopian 
cannot  change  his  skin,  nor  the  leopard  his  spots.1 

1  Bohtlingk  pays  ("Ueber  die  Sprache  der  Jakuten,"  p.  xvii. 
note),  "  I  cannot  understand  how  with  such  views  on  the  origin  of 
flexion,  anyone  could  remain  in  doubt  for  a  moment  as  to  whether 


THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT.       141 

The  advocates  of  this  theory  of  development, 
who  would  cast  all  men  in  exactly  the  same  mould, 
instead  of  admitting  that  different  races  have 
started  in  history  with  different  tendencies,  different 
potentialities,  are  obliged  to  lay  down  that  each 
successive  stage  in  the  evolution  of  language  marks 
a  successive  progress  in  civilisation,  and  that  as 
men  became  more  civilised,  so  did  they  approach 
more  nearly  to  the  inflectional  level.  But  this  is  to 
ignore  the  facts.  Chinese  civilisation  is  the  oldest 
now  existing  in  the  world;  its  origin  is  lost  in  myth, 
and  its  continuity  is  unbroken.  And  yet  its 
founders  spoke  an  isolating  language,  while  their 
barbarian  neighbours  on  the  West  were  in  the 
more  advanced  and  civilised  stage  of  agglutination  ; 
and  not  only  so,  but  all  their  long  unbroken  civil- 
isation, all  the  meditations  of  Confucius  or  Men- 
cius,  all  the  desperate  contrivances  of  writing,  all 
the  intercourse  with  an  Aryan  population  that 
Buddhism  introduced,  have  not  made  the  Chinese 
language  advance  one  step  beyond  its  first  isolating 
sta^e.  Phonetic  decav  has  been  at  work  in  the 
vocabulary,  dialects  have  sprung  up  in  the  empire, 
new  words  have  been  applied  to  denote  the  rela- 

a  monosyllabic  language,  like  Chinese,  and  Sanskrit  could  have  one 
and  the  same  origin.  I  say  'could  have  '  and  not  'had,'  since  all 
efforts  to  make  such  a  common  origin  in  any  way  probable,  must 
be  regarded  from  the  outset  as  idle  and  fruitless,  and  consequently 
unscientific." 


142      THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT. 

tions  of  grammar  (more  especially  in  writing),  and 
yet  the  sentence  is  still  confined  to  the  individual 
vocable,  and  position  and  tone  must  determine  the 
meaning  of  the  speaker.1  It  is  the  same  with  the 
other  Taic  languages  in  the  south,  where  the  late 
King  of  Siarn,  at  all  events,  is  said  to  have  been 
the  most  learned  monarch  in  the  world.  Nor  is  it 
otherwise  when  we  look  at  the  western  side  of  Asia. 
Civilisation  there  began  in  the  valley  of  the  Tigris 
and  Euphrates ;  and  the  cuneiform  monuments 
have  informed  us  that  the  first  known  inhabitants 
of  the  country,  the  inventors  of  writing  and  arith- 
metic, the  builders  of  cities  and  temples,  the 
observers  of  the  phenomena  of  the  sky ;   nay,  it 

1  Professor  Whitney  ("Language  and  the  Study  of  Langtiage," 
3d  edit.,  p.  336)  writes  as  follows  about  the  Chinese  : — "The  power 
which  the  human  mind  has  over  its  instruments,  and  its  indepen- 
dence of  their  imperfections,  is  strikingly  illustrated  by  the  history  of 
this  form  of  speech,  which  has  successfully  answered  all  the  purposes 
of  a  cultivated,  reflecting,  studious,  and  ingenious  people  throughout 
a  career  of  unequalled  duration  ;  which  has  been  put  to  far  higher 
and  more  varied  uses  than  most  of  the  multitude  of  highly  organ- 
ised dialects  spoken  among  men — dialects  rich  in  flexibility,  adapt- 
iveness,  and  power  of  expansion,  but  poor  in  all  the  mental  poverty 
and  weakness  of  those  who  wield  them.  In  the  domain  of  language, 
as  in  some  departments  of  art  and  industry,  no  race  has  been  com- 
parable with  the  Chinese  for  capacity  to  accomplish  wonderful 
things  with  rude  and  uncouth  instruments."  Before  building  the 
huge  inverted  pyramid  of  the  development  theory  upon  a  few  one- 
Bided  inferences  and  hasty  assumptions,  derived  from  the  phe- 
nomena of  Aryan  flection,  it  would  be  well  had  the  advocates  of  the 
theory  considered  this  single  fact  of  the  fossilisation  of  the  Chinese 
language  side  by  side  with  a  progressive  society  and  civilisation. 


THEORY  OF  THREE   STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT.       143 

would  also  seem,  the  instructors  of  the  "  inflec- 
tional "  Semites  in  the  rudiments  of  civilisation, 
were  a  people  whose  language  was  agglutinative  in 
the  highest  degree.  Is  it  not  strange  that  through- 
out their  long  career,  in  spite  of  the  example  given 
them  by  their  Semitic  neighbours,  the  Accadians 
should  not  have  improved  upon  the  original  cha- 
racter of  their  language  in  the  slightest,  although 
their  Elamite  kindred,  less  advanced  in  culture,  it 
would  appear,  than  themselves,  had  reached  just 
that  amount  of  semi-inflection  in  the  verbs  which 
strikes  us  in  the  Finnic  dialects  ?  It  is  equally 
remarkable  that  the  latter,  which  bear  a  very  close 
resemblance  to  this  Elamite  idiom,  should  have 
made  no  further  progress  in  the  direction  of  inflec- 
tion, notwithstanding  their  longer  period  of  exist- 
ence and  their  contact  with  the  Aryans.  All  goes 
to  show  that  an  isolating  or  agglutinative  stage 
does  not  imply  civilisation  or  the  reverse,  and  that 
no  amount  of  culture,  no  amount  of  years,  and  no 
amount  of  foreign  intercourse,  has  been  able  to  change 
the  radical  character  of  a  language.  Surely,  if  the 
three  stages  of  language  mean  mental  progress,  that 
progress  would  have  been  attained  more  or  less 
by  those  who  were  capable  of  originating  civili- 
sation ;  and  if  the  circumstances  of  civilised  life 
are  able  to  alter  the  conception  of  the  world  and 
its  expression  in  language,  Chinese  and  Accadian 


144      THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT. 

would    have   afforded  marked    illustration   of  the 
power.     To  say  that  Chinese  is  artificially  fossil- 
ised is  not  only  to   beg  the    question,   but   also 
to  assume  that  civilisation  stereotypes    an  early 
expression  of  thought ;    an  assumption   contrary 
to  facts,   as  well  as  to  the  theory  of  continuous 
development  itself ;    and  then  what  becomes  of  a 
barbarous  isolating  language  like  that  of  the  Ainos  ? 
The  Aryans  were  not  very  highly  civilised  when  they 
herded  together  on  the  plateau  of  the  Hindu  Kush  ; 
yet  according  to  the  common  hypothesis,  they  had 
already  passed  through  the  stages  of  isolation  and 
agglutination,  which  their  more  civilised  cotempo- 
raries  in  China  and  Babylonia  were  never  able  to 
transcend.      Nothing  can  show  more  clearly  the 
baselessness  of  a  theory  which  asserts  that  every 
language,    with     sufficient  time  and   civilisation, 
must  pass  through  the  three  epochs  of  develop- 
ment.     "What   was   sufficient    for    the    Aryan    or 
Semite  was  surely  sufficient  for  the  Chinaman  or 
Accadian.     The  civilisation  of  the  latter  may  have 
been  defective  and  inferior,  but  it  has  the  merit  of 
origination  ;   and  the  superiority  of  our  own  shows 
only    the    superior   intellectual    capacities   of    the 
race,  that  is,  that  the  micd  of  the  primitive  Aryan 
was  potentially  superior  to  that  of  the   Chinaman, 
and   accordingly   potentially   conceived  of  things 
and  their  relations  and  embodied  its  conceptions 


THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT.       145 

in  speech  in  a  superior  way.  We  are  apt  to  under- 
rate the  extent  of  the  psychological  change  that  is 
implied  in  the  passage  from  one  of  these  modes  of 
expressing  thought  to  the  other.  It  is  little  short 
of  a  radical  metamorphosis  of  the  mind.  And 
when  we  think  of  the  impossibility  which  the  Jew 
of  Alexandria,  and  afterwards  the  Arab  of  Spain, 
had  in  understanding  the  primary  truths  of  Greek 
philosophy,  in  spite  of  education  and  culture  as 
well  as  the  fact  of  their  all  using  inflected  lan- 
guages, we  may  gain  some  idea  of  the  impossi- 
bility the  unassisted  primitive  savage  would  have 
found  in  changing  his  mental  point  of  view  in 
the  concerns  of  everyday  life.  What  Philo  and 
Averrhoes  could  not  do  on  a  small  scale,  could  the 
early  Aryan  or  Semite  have  done  upon  a  large  scale? 
The  theory,  moreover,  does  not  take  account  of 
the  forms  of  speech  which  do  not  strictly  fall 
under  one  of  the  three  heads.  The  so-called  poly- 
synthetic  languages  of  North  America,  for  instance, 
are  extremely  important,  characterising  as  they  do 
a  whole  continent.  Here  the  sentence  is  fused 
together  into  a  sort  of  long  compound,  the  several 
words  of  which  it  is  composed  being  cut  down  to 
bare  themes  or  roots,  by  the  same  kind  of  accentual 
instinct  that  makes  the  French  drop  their  final 
letters  in  pronunciation,  though  each  fragment 
still  remains  an  independent  word  of  equal  force 

K 


14G      THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT. 

with  the  rest.  Thus  in  Mexican  a  priest  is  ad- 
dressed as  notlazomahuizteopixcatdtziji,  compounded 
of  no,  "  my ;  "  tlazontli,  "  esteemed  ;  "  mahuiztic, 
"  revered  ;  "  teo-jrixqui,  "  god-keeper  ;  "  and  tatli, 
"  father  :"  l  and  in  Delaware,  kuligatchis  signifies 
"  give  me  your  pretty  little  paw,"  from  k,  the 
inseparable  particle-pronoun  of  the  second  person  ; 
wulit,  "  pretty;"  wichgat,  "  paw," and  shiss,  " little- 
ness." Compound  words  are,  of  course,  formed 
in  the  same  way,  like  the  Delaware  pildpe,  "  a 
youth,"  literally  "  new "  or  ".untried  man," 
from  ape,  "yir."  and  pil,  "  acting."  Are  we 
to  class  these  languages  under  the  isolating, 
since  the  sentence  is  reduced  to  one  long  word 
pronounced  at  a  breath,  or  under  the  agglu- 
tinative, since  the  elements  continue  coequal 
and  independent,  or  under  the  inflectional,  since 
they  have  been  subjected  to  a  species  of  phonetic 
decay?  Again,  if  we  consider  the  incorporating 
languages,  those,  namely,  which  insert  the  objec- 
tive pronoun  into  the  verbal  form,  we  shall  have 
to  admit  two  possible  ramifications  of  the  agglu- 
tinative group.  Incorporation  appears  in  its  sim- 
plest form  in  Accadian  :  thus  in-bat,  "  he  opened;" 
in-nin-bat,  ';  he  opened  it;  "  and  we  may  even  have 
the  root  used  as  a  substantive  thrust  between  the 

i  Humboldt,  "Essai  Folit.  surle  Royaunie  De  Nouv.  Espague," 
p.  81. 


THEOKY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF   DEVELOPMENT.       147 

pronoun  and  the  same  root  used  as  a  verb,  as  in- 
sub-sube,  "  he  builds  a  building."  The  same  phe- 
nomena show  themselves  in  Basque,  where  the 
endless  forms  of  the  two  auxiliary  verbs  are  due 
to  the  wearing  of  time,  which  has  amalgamated 
the  incorporated  pronouns,  and  sometimes  even 
(as  in  Accadian)  an  incorporated  noun.  Didac, 
"  you  have  it  for  me,"  for  instance,  is  decomposed 
into  the  ace.  d,  the  dat.  id,  the  root  a  or  au1  and 
the  nom.  c ;  dizut,  lt  I  have  it  for  you,"  into  the 
ace.  d,  the  dat.  iz,  the  root  au,  and  the  nom.  t ; 
while  the  characteristic  of  the  pi.,  it,  is  intercalated 
into  the  root,  thus  cutting  it  in  two.  Certain 
verbal  forms  in  Magyar,  again,  enclose  the  objec- 
tive pronoun  ;  and  the  Finnic  Mordvinian  of  North 
Russia,  where  m  +  «i='<me  +  thou,"  or  m  +  am  = 
"  me  +  he,"  sets  the  contrivance  before  us  as  plainly 
as  Accadian  and  Basque.  When,  therefore,  we  are 
told  that  language  must  pass  through  an  agglutina- 
tive stage,  we  may  inquire  whether  that  means 
incorporation  or  not,  or  whether  it  is  necessary 
that   every   agglutinative    language    should    once 

1  Mr  Van  Eys  ("  Le  Verbe  auxiliaire  basque  "  1S74),  has  shown 
that  this  aw,  which  has  been  further  weakened  into  ei  and  i  in  the 
Souletin  dialect,  is  a  worn-away  form  of  eroa(n),  "to  make  go. 
R  between  two  vowels  falls  away  in  Basque,  and  the  Biscayan 
dialect  still  preserves  the  full  form  eroa.  Eroan  is  itself  contracted 
from  erazo-joan  or  erazo-yoan,  the  causative  of  erazo,  "to  go."  A 
verb  which  signifies  '"'  to  go  "  may  easily  become  a  simple  auxiliary, 
as  in  Italian,  where  se  va  dicendo  represents  the  French  "  on  dit." 


148      THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT. 

have  been  incorporating?  Of  course,  polysyn- 
thetic  and  incorporating  are  to  be  kept  care- 
fully apart :  in  the  one,  the  words  of  a  whole 
sentence  are  reduced  to  their  unmodified  roots,  and 
fused  into  a  kind  of  long  word ;  in  the  other  a  few 
words  are  loosely  attached  to  the  verbal  root,  un- 
impaired and  independent.  There  is  much  more 
difference  between  incorporation  andpolysynthetism 
than  between  incorporation  and  inflection.  In  some 
respects,  indeed,  Basque  might  almost  be  considered 
to  have  entered  upon  the  road  of  inflection. 

This  leads  us  to  what  first  suggested,  and  has 
since  been  the  chief  support  of,  the  theory  under 
discussion.  An  analysis  of  the  Aryan  inflections 
seems  to  take  us  back  to  a  period  when  the  primi- 
tive language  was  purely  agglutinative,  and  to  a 
still  earlier  period  when  it  consisted  of  rough 
isolated  roots  alone.  The  inflections  of  the  verb 
in  Aryan  as  well  as  in  Semitic  can  be  traced  to  the 
attachment  of  the  objective  cases  of  the  personal 
pronouns  to  the  root  or  base,  while  many  of  the 
verbal  forms  seem  to  be  the  result  of  a  combina- 
tion of  the  root  with  other  verbs,  ya,  "  to  go,"  d/ia, 
"  to  place,"  or  the  substantive  verbs  as  and  bha.1 

1  Westphal  and  Merguet  deny  this,  and  Weatphal'a  view,  as  ex- 
pressed in  hifl  "  Vergleichende  Grammatik  d.  indogerrnanischen 
Sprachen,"  vol.  i.  pp.  xxiii.  sq.,  is  at  first  sight  very  plausible.  He 
urges  that  just  as  science  has  shown  that  the  earth  goes  round  the 
sun,  and  not  the  sun  round  the  earth,  so  the  person-endings  of  the 


THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT.       149 

Other  forms,  however,  such  as  the  reduplicated  per- 
fect or  the  optative  (Sanskrit  bkavey-am  =  (pvot/u) , 
have  had  a  different  origin,  not  unlike  that  of 
the  Teutonic  ablaut,  which  represents  unmeaning 
vowel  changes  (caused  by  the  accents)  in  Sanskrit, 
or  of  the  use  of  the  vowels  in  Semitic  to  distinguish 

verb  are  the  originals  out  of  which  the  personal  pronouns  have 
been  afterwards  elaborated  by  a  process  of  analysis  and  differentia- 
tion. His  arguments  against  the  ordinary  agglutination  theory  of 
the  origin  of  verbal  flection  are  (1)  that  none  of  the  existing  forms 
of  the  third  pers.  sing.,  for  example,  numerous  as  they  are,  repre- 
sent what  the  agglutination  theory  assumes  as  the  primitive  pro- 
noun-termination— ti  in  the  present,  t  in  the  first  preterite,  and  tu 
in  the  imperative  instead  of  the  hypothetical  ta — and  we  are  not 
justified  in  assuming  the  existence  of  a  form  which  is  never  found 
in  any  of  the  many  Aryan  dialects,  and  must  on  the  contrary  have 
branched  off  into  three  distinct  varieties  ;  (2)  that  the  change  of 
the  hypothetical  tata  into  the  deviating  tai,  la  and  tau  of  the 
Atmane-pada  present,  first  preterite,  and  imperative  is  unparalleled 
and  unwarrantable  ;  (3)  that  no  sign  of  the  third  person  can  be 
discovered  in  the  n  of  the  third  pers.  pi.  (nti,  nt) ;  (4)  that  the  ex- 
planation of  the  fulcrum-vowel  (as  in  bhav-a-ti)  as  a  demonstrative 
is  absurd,  since  a  demonstrative  would  have  no  sense  in  such  a 
position  ;  and  (o)  that  if  the  pronouns  had  been  prior  to  the  verbal 
endings,  the  latter  would  have  been  formed  by  means  of  the  nomi- 
native and  not  the  objective  case  of  the  pronouns,  whereas  as 
a  matter  of  fact  the  nominative  case  of  the  pronouns  (aham,  ego,  for 
instance)  is  later  than  the  oblique  cases  and  posterior  to  the  flection 
of  the  verb.  Prof.  Curtius's  answer  to  the  last  objection  ("  Das 
Verbum  der  Griechischen  Sprache,"  pp.  21,  22)  is  not  wholly  satis- 
factory, and  Westphal's  third  and  fourth  arguments  cannot  well  be 
controverted  ;  but  an  analysis  of  verbal  flection  in  Semitic  (so  dif- 
ferent in  this  respect  from  that  of  nominal  flection)  is  convincing 
as  to  the  truth  of  the  "  agglutination  theory  "  so  far  as  the  verb  is 
concerned,  and  I  confess  to  feeling  as  unable  as  Prof.  Curtius  to 
understand  Westphal's  "logical  categories  of  the  organism  of 
flection,"  or  to  admit  the  assumption  of  "pleonastic  "  letters. 


150       THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT. 

different  parts  of  the  verb.  The  modern  languages 
of  Europe  have  returned  to  the  simplicity  of  the 
primitive  Aryan  verb,  though  the  pronoun  has  be- 
come subject  instead  of  being  semi-objective.  All 
this  would  apparently  tend  to  show  that  flection 
did  not  originally  belong  to  the  verb,  and  that  there 
was  a  time  when  its  several  relations  of  time  and 
mode  and  person  were  each  expressed  by  indepen- 
dent words.  The  analysis  thus  successfully  carried 
out  in  the  verb  has  been  applied  to  the  noun,  but 
the  results  here  have  not  been  so  decisive.  One  or 
two  of  the  case-endings  have  been  identified  with 
prepositions,  or  in  this  case  postpositions,  the 
locative  (primarily  -in,  as  in  Sanskrit  tasmin,  "  in 
that  ")  with  in,  and  the  instrumental  with  bhi, 
"  by,"  and  an  attempt  has  been  made  to  com- 
pare the  sibilant  of  the  genitive  and  of  the  dual 
and  plural  with  the  adverbial  sa  (sam,  sahd),  and 
that  again  with  the  demonstrative  pronoun.  The 
other  cases  are  referred  to  pronominal  roots ;  but 
however  well  a  demonstrative  may  suit  the  nomi- 
native, it  is  difficult  to  see  how  it  could  express 
the  other  cases,  or  how  the  other  cases  could  have 
arisen  out  of  it.  How,  for  instance,  could  the  third 
personal  reflexive  pronoun  swa,  se,  produce  the 
plural  locative,  or  the  idea  of  the  accusative  be 
obtained  from  mdmf  ma,  "me,"  or  ama,  "that," 
used  to  denote  "  a  suffering  object"  ?     Moreover, 


THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT.       151 

the  pronominal  ta,  which  plays  so  important  a  part 
in  the  ordinary  analysis  of  flection,  is  as  Ludwig  1 
points  out,  a  nonentity,  since  t  is  always  followed 
"by  the  vowel  i.  In  fact,  the  whole  pronominal 
theory  rests  upon  a  very  narrow  basis,  as  we  shall 
see  further  on  ;  and  the  primitive  Aryan  must  have 
been  at  once  supernaturally  clever  and  super- 
naturally  stupid  to  extract  the  various  cases  of 
the  noun  by  ringing  the  changes  on  a  row  of  de- 
monstrative suffixes.2    Against  the  whole  assump- 

1  "  Agglutination  oder  Adaptation,"  p.  18. 

2  Prof essor  Curtius  ("Zur  Chronologied.  indog.  Sprachforschung") 
endeavours  to  set  aside  the  objection  that  two  such  different  cases  as 
the  nominative  and  the  genitive  could  hardly  have  been  formed  by 
the  same  demonstrative  suffix,  by  the  assumption  that  they  belong  to 
two  different  periods  of  linguistic  growth.  I  think  there  can  be  little 
doubt  tLat  the  idea  of  the  genitive  was  later  thanthat  of  thenominative 
or  accusitive;  but  the  difficulty  in  the  present  case  is  this :  either 
the  suffix  out  of  which  the  genitive  relation  was  to  grow  was  affixed 
to  the  nominative  (sivana-sa-sa),  which  is  contrary  to  fact,  or  the 
genitive  suffix  was  attached  at  the  same  time  to  what  afterwards 
became  distinguished  into  nominative  and  genitive,  which  is  contrary 
to  the  hypothesis.  The  eminent  German  philologist  farther  urges 
the  two  following  arguments  in  behalf  of  the  originally  isolating 
character  of  Aryan  speech.  First  of  all,  he  instances  compound 
tenses  like  a-dik-sa-t  (e'5et£e),  in  which  I  agree  with  him  in  seeing 
the  substintive  verb.  But  the  statement  that  if  cases  had  already 
existed  tie  root  clik  ought  to  have  had  the  plural  affix  in  the  plural 
and  the  accusative  affix  in  the  singular,  like  the  Latin  amatum  in, 
is  met  partly  by  Scherer's  answer  ("Zur  Gesch.  d.  d.  Spr.,"  p. 343 
sq.)  that  dik  is  a  nomcn  actionis  like  the  later  Sanskrit  cliorayani 
dsa,  and  vould  therefore  not  require  the  plural  sign  ;  partly  by  the 
consideration  that  just  as  sa  has  lost  its  initial  a,  so  dik  may  have 
lost  its  final  to,  while  we  find  later  compound  tenses,  like  the  Latin 
imperfect  or  the  Teutonic   preterite,  which   certainly  came   into 


152      THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT. 

tion  lies  the  fact  that  no  such  vague  generality, 
such  clumsy  confusion,  appears  in  the  attachment 
of  the  pronouns  to  the  verb.  Can  we  suppose  that 
the  same  people  who  so  distinctly  marked  out  the 
meaning  of  mi  in  the  verb  can  have  employed 
it  to  express  the  sense  of  the  accusative  ?  If  it  be 
replied  that  the  pronouns  were  all  of  indefinite 
signification,  and  might  be  attached  to  the  roots 
at  haphazard  to  express  the  various  relations  of 
the  sentence,  out  of  which  the  different  cases 
gradually   grew    in  some    unexplained    way,  and 

existence  after  the  flection  of  the  noun  was  fully  formed,  equally 
using,  if  not  the  pure  root,  at  all  events  the  thematic  one. 
Such  verbs  as  cale-fio,  again,  bear  the  same  testimony.  Frofessor 
Curtius's  second  and  strongest  argument  is  derived  from  tte  exist- 
ence of  compounds  which  might  be  regarded  as  survivals  from  an 
uninflected  stage  of  language.  A  word  like  poooddKrvXos,  for  in- 
stance, might  seem  to  be  a  witness  of  a  time  when  the  special 
suffixes  of  the  plural  and  the  genitive  were  altogether  unknown. 
But  I  think  a  different  explanation  of  the  phenomenon  will  be 
suggested  as  soon  as  we  remember  that  philology  does  not  start 
from  the  isolated  written  word,  but  from  the  sentence.  Jlr  Sweet 
{Academy,  January  17,  1874)  says  very  truly  :  "  The  antiquarian 
philologist,  having  the  written  symbols  constantly  before  his  eyes, 
gradually  comes  to  abstract  them  entirely  from  the  sounds  they 
stand  for,  and  at  last  regards  them  as  the  language.  .  .  .  If  a  spoken 
sentence  from  some  African  language  is  submitted  to  him,  with  a 
request  to  point  out  the  word-divisions,  he  will  ask  to  see  the  sen- 
tence written  down  ;  and  then,  if  told  that  the  language  has  no 
alphabet,  and  has  never  been  committed  to  writing,  will  have  to 
confess  that  he  is  utterly  ignorant  of  the  real  nature  of  a  word." 
A  word  is  really  a  complete  conception  ;  and  a  compound  word, 
accordingly,  is  but  one  whole,  one  word,  the  component  parts  of 
which  exist  only  for  the  analyst.     Av<nrapis  and  tyrannicide  are  as 


THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT.       153 

appropriated  the  several  pronominal  roots  to  them- 
selves ;  we  must  answer,  firstly,  that  the  whole 
hypothesis  is  unsupported  by  facts,  and  therefore 
beyond  the  range  of  Glottology ;  secondly,  that 
even  the  communistic  inhabitants  of  a  bee-hive 
would  find  it  hard  to  be  mutually  intelligible 
with  such  conversational  machinery ;  thirdly,  that 
the  growth  of  the  idea  of  the  several  cases  out 
of  such  a  chaos,  much  less  their  selection, 
is  inexplicable,   since  the  accidental  terminations 

truly  single  words  as  lldpis  and  tyrannus,  and  it  was  but  the  living 
instinct  of  language  that  separated  between  the  radical  idea  and  the 
relational  suffix,  and  when  closely  subordinating  one  idea  to  an- 
other, so  as  to  weld  them  into  one  new  whole,  left  only  the  bare 
root  or  theme  to  the  first.  The  vocative  and  imperative  were  abid- 
ing monuments  of  the  flectionless  type-stem.  I  cannot  conceive  a 
period  in  which  men  talked  to  one  another  in  roots ;  the  roots 
must  have  had  many  suffixes  of  little  meaning  attached  to  them — 
even  the  anti-inflectionists  admit  this — but  behind  all  these  uttered 
suffixes  lay  the  root-type  firmly  though  obscurely  fixed  in  the 
consciousness  of  the  savage.  The  instinct  which  still  strips  the 
subordinated  word  of  its  flection  in  a  compound  is  the  representa- 
tive of  this  early  feeling  of  language,  not  the  imitation  of  a  pattern 
set  in  a  pre-flectional  age.  Indeed,  in  this  case  all  the  words  of  a 
sentence  must  have  stood  in  the  same  flectionless  relation  to  each 
other ;  and  it  is  hard  to  see  how  some  could  have  remained  in 
their  old  condition  while  the  rest  followed  the  new  analogy  and 
law  of  inflection.  But  the  evidence  of  the  Semitic  tongues  seems 
to  me  conclusive  upon  this  point.  In  Assyrian  the  construct  case 
is  marked  by  the  loss  of  the  case-vowel,  but  not  of  the  feminine 
termination  ;  thus  sar  sarri  (for  sarrusarri),  "king  of  kings,"  but 
sarratmati,  ''queen  of  the  land."  Surely  it  will  not  be  said  that 
the  case  flection  is  older  than  feminine  flection,  or  that  a  compound 
can  more  readily  dispense  with  the  one  than  with  the  other  ? 


154      THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMEXT. 

would  have  confused  the  mind,  not  led  it 
towards  analysis ;  fourthly,  that  there  was  no 
difference  between  the  nominative,  the  genitive, 
and  the  dual  and  plural,  so  far  as  suffixes  go, 
and  yet  these  are  among  the  most  important 
distinctions ;  and  fifthly  and  chiefly,  that  even 
supposing  we  grant  all  that  is  required  of  us,  we 
shall  still  be  no  nearer  to  an  agglutinative  condi- 
tion  of  the  primitive  Aryan,  since  the  aggluti- 
native languages  do  not  form  their  oblique  cases 
by  the  help  of  pronouns,  but  of  postpositions,  or 
rather  verbal  and  nominal  roots.1  The  relation  of 
cases,  like  all  other  relations,  is  with  them  an  in- 
dependent word ;  and  from  the  Accadian  down  to 
the  latest  and  most  barbarous  dialect,  we  find  words 
like  lal,  "  filling,"  ge,  "  deep,"  ra,  "  inundating," 
employed  to  express  the  several  cases.  In  fact, 
to  represent  these  by  indefinite  pronouns  is  the 
characteristic  of  a  language  inflectional  from  the 
beginning,  in  which  the  suffix  is  weakened  and 
subordinated  to  the  radical.  It  points  to  a  primary 
inflectional   instinct,   which   shaped  the    sentence 


1  What  are  "apparently  "  demonstrative  pronouns  (like  wa  and 
wo  in  Japanese,  or  ano,  inv.  in  Mongol)  may  be  loosely  attached  to 
mark  the  nominative  and  accusative.  Analogy  would  lead  us  to 
infer  that  these  demonstratives,  like  the  other  pronouns,  had  a  sub- 
stantival origin  ;  and  Accadian,  the  oldest  example  of  agglutinative 
speech  that  we  possess,  distinguishes  the  nominative  and  accusa- 
tive by  position  only,  forming  all  its  "cases"  by  means  of  verbs 
(participles)  and  substantives. 


THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT.       ]  55 

accordingly  as  soon  as  the  period  of  conscious  speech 
arrived.  When  the  conception  of  the  locative  case, 
for  example,  first  arose  in  the  mind  of  the  Aryan, 
he  selected  some  formally  existing  but  hitherto 
meaningless  suffixes  to  express  the  new  relation, 
and  so  turned  a  mere  phonetic  complement,  a 
mere  formal  sound,  into  a  grammatical  inflection. 
It  is  the  same  with  Semitic.  Here  the  original 
machinery  of  cases  was  elaborated  by  the  adapta- 
tion of  the  three  primary  vowels,  ^^,  i,  and  a, 
though  a  might  have  been  the  earliest  sound 
shading  off  into  u,  the  sign  of  the  nominative,  by 
slowly  closing  the  lips,  and  into  i,  the  sign  of  the 
genitive,  by  raising  the  tongue  towards  the  palate. 
It  was  not  until  later  times  that  the  case-ter- 
minations were  confused  together,  and  replaced, 
as  in  English  or  Persian,  by  prepositions.  It  is 
plain  that,  before  the  setting  apart  of  the  three 
primary  vowels,  the  Semites  had  no  cases  ;  as  soon 
as  they  became  conscious  of  the  want  of  them,  the 
cases  came  into  existence,  and  this  by  purely  in- 
flectional means,  in  which  there  can  be  no  question 
of  agglutination  with  pronouns  or  aught  else.  In 
Aryan,  likewise,  we  must  believe  that  case  and 
flection — whatever  may  be  the  origin  of  the  latter 
— are  co-existent.  As  far  back  as  the  Aryan  had 
any  conception  of  the  relations  of  a  sentence,  he 
expressed  them  by  subordinate  suffixes,  not  by  the 
help  of  independent  agglutinations.     More  complex 


156      THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT. 

nominal  relations  might  be  represented,  as  in  the 
Latin  gratia,  or  the  Greek  x^PLV,>  or  ^ne  German 
wegen,  by  a  kind  of  postposition ;  but  whenever 
the  latter  ceased  to  be  a  separate  word  which  could 
receive  inflections  of  its  own,  and  became  simply 
the  sign  of  a  case,  it  was  forthwith  assimilated  to 
the  other  merely  flectional  cases,  and  its  individu- 
ality lost.  The  clear  flectional  growth  of  the  verb 
shows  only  that  it  took  place  during  the  historic 
period,  when  the  structure  and  tendency  of  the 
language  were  already  inflectional,  and  that  it  was 
of  later  origin  than  the  noun.1 

1  Prof.  Curtius,  indeed,  has  endeavoured  to  prove  the  converse 
— that  the  inflections  of  the  verb  are  older  than  those  of  the  noun. 
I  have  already  tried  to  meet  his  arguments  in  my  note  on  p.  149, 
and  Prof.  Max  Muller  in  his  lecture  on  "  Chronology  as  applied  to 
the  Development  of  Language,"  has,  as  it  seems  to  me,  demon- 
strated the  untenability  of  the  great  German  philologist's  view. 
Indeed,  Prof.  Curtius  himself  ("Das  Verbum  d.  Griechischen 
Sprache,"  vol.  i.,  pp.  8,  9)  has  pointed  out  a  fact  which  is  hardly 
consistent  with  his  theory.  "  While  the  system  of  the  cases,"  he 
says,  "  not  only  had  no  addition  made  to  it  during  the  period  of 
which  we  have  documentary  evidence,  but  on  the  contrary  were 
reduced  in  number,  and  even  in  the  language  of  Homer  had  already 
suffered  very  considerable  losses,  in  the  case  of  the  verb  the  crea- 
tive impulse  of  language  continued  far  longer  active  and  living." 
The  weak  future  passive  is  altogether  wanting  in  the  Homeric 
poems,  while  the  only  certain  example  of  the  strong  future  passive 
is  fiiyrjaeadai  (II.  x.  365),  and  the  future  optative  is  equally  un- 
known. Such  is  also  the  case  with  the  aspirated  perfect,  and  the 
extended  use  of  the  perfect  in  K  is  still  a  matter  of  the  future. 
Surely  it  would  have  been  in  the  forms  of  the  verb  and  not  of  the 
noun  that  "the  creative  impulse  of  language"  first  died  out,  had 
verbal  flection  been  older  than  nominal  flection. 


THEOEY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT.       157 

But  even  so  this  Sectional  growth  of  the  verb 
refers  only  to  the  verb  as  we  have  it  in  our  gram- 
mars, with  all  its  moods,  and  tenses,  and  persons 
fully  worked  out.  There  was  a  time  when  the  verb 
simply  signified  action  in  general,  and  the  suffixes 
which  it  then  possessed  were  sufficient  to  denote 
this  general  idea.  It  was  not  until  the  conception 
of  personal  relation  had  been  struck  out,  that  any 
necessity  for  the  employment  of  the  personal  pro- 
nouns arose ;  though  Ludwig  cannot  be  right  in 
referring  the  -sti  of  the  second  person  of  the  Latin 
perfect  to  an  old  infinitive  termination,  a0ai,  now 
utilised  for  a  new  purpose,  like  -mini  in  the  second 
person  plural  of  the  passive.  Flection,  it  must 
be  remembered,  is  constituted  by  a  combination 
of  meaning  and  form ;  it  is  meaning  that  gives  it 
existence  and  content,  and  until  this  is  furnished, 
the  form  remains  a  mere  phonetic  sound.  Now. 
meaning  cannot  be  separated  from  the  sentence 
out  of  which  each  nuance  of  grammar  has  been 
eleborated,  and  not  out  of  lifeless  sounds  which 
the  prevalent  glottological  theory  would  assume 
to  be  the  immediate  parent  of  the  inward  and 
spiritual.  The  idea  of  the  instrumental  case,  for 
instance,  must  have  been  obtained  from  a  deeper 
analysis  of  the  sentence,  which  all  along  implicitly 
contained  it ;  and  then  some  already  existing  end- 
ing or  suffix  was  set  apart  to  express  it.      In  this 


158      THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT. 

way  we  are  able  to  explain  how  it  is  that  the  same 
sound  is  not  appropriated  to  the  same  case,  to  the 
same  grammatical  relation,  in  each  and  all  of  the 
Aryan  languages,  hut  that  i  and  bids  stand  for  the 
locative  singular  and  instrumental  plural  in  San- 
skrit, and  for  the  dative  singular  and  plural  in 
Greek  and  Latin.  Still  more  significant  is  the 
change  of  meaning  of  a  form  in  the  same  language, 
as  in  the  case  of  tar,  which  characterises  the 
present  tense  in  the  Veda  and  the  future  in  the 
later  epic.  That  such  unmeaning  terminations 
existed  in  the  period  which  lies  immediately  behind 
that  in  which  Comparative  Philology  properly 
begins,  has  been  made  sufficiently  clear  by  the 
Prague  professor  to  whom  I  have  already  alluded.1 
Although  to  the  analytical  lexicographer  of  the 
nineteenth  century  the  ultimate  germ  of  a  group 
of  words  is  a  monosyllabic  root,  yet  when  we  come 
to  regard  these  germs  as  beginning  to  be  endowed 
with  life  and  meaning,  as  capable  of  being  em- 
ployed in  living,  actual  speech  by  the  addition  of 
suffixes,  we  find  that  they  are  for  the  most  part 
no  longer  monosyllabic,  but  are,  in  the  jargon  of 

1  A  cliiM  whom  I  know,  though  learning  to  speak  at  a  later  age 
than  her  elder  brothers  and  sisters,  generally  adds  an  6  to  her 
words,  as  "dog-5,"  "corne-o,"  &c.  May  we  not  see  in  this  a  re- 
version to  that  primitive  tendency  of  men  to  round  off  their  words 
with   merely  euphonic  BufBxes,  which  appears  so  plainly  in    the 

-e -endings  of  the  Semitic  tongues  ? 


THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT.       159 

the  grammar,  become  bases.  Thus  the  Sanskrit 
zodhavai,  the  Latin  vectu  (=  vectui),  the  Slavonic 
vdsti,  must  be  regarded  as  independent  unless  a  root, 
mghi-tavai,  be  presupposed.  The  same  fact  appears 
still  more  unmistakably  in  varying  forms  with 
identical  meanings,  such  as  rat  and  rdjan,  bhiis 
and  bhumi,  us-  and  us  as,  sthdt  and  stkdtar,  trii  and 
trisd,  where  phonetic  difference  is  not  accompanied 
by  difference  of  function,  that  is,  where  the 
material  outward  elements  of  flection  exist,  but 
there  is  no  flection  as  yet,  because  the  inward 
signification  which  makes  flection  still  lies  implicit 
and  unrealised  in  the  sentence  ;  or,  again,  in  roots 
of  similar  meaning  and  similar  sound,  but  which 
differ  either  in  the  initial  or  the  final  consonant. 
Sthd,  stabh,  stav  (aravpo?),  star  (o-repeos)  in  San- 
skrit, or  arey  and  re<y  in  Greek,  for  example,  like 
the  Semitic  X?bf  $6  Bfl^,  an1?,  an*?,  all  go  back 
to  the  same  ultimate  analytical  origin ;  but  no  one 
would  think  of  discovering  any  diversity  of  sig- 
nification in  the  several  varying  forms.  Each  was 
a  form  of  the  same  unconsciously  felt  type,  which 
lay  at  the  bottom  of  the  consciously-spoken  word. 
But  the  word,  as  conveying  sense  and  meaning, 
as  filled  with  content  and  life,  could  not  exist 
apart  from  the  sentence ;  of  this  it  formed  a 
portion;  and  the  relation  which  it  expressed  in 
this  was  determined  by  the  other  words  with  which 


160      THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT. 

it  was  joined.  Now,  it  was  just  this  determination, 
and  nothing  else,  which  created  flection.  The  un- 
meaning: terminations  of  the  several  words  were 
used  as  the  external  signs  and  channels  of  this 
determination,  and  thereby  flection,  both  on  its 
internal  and  its  external  side,  became  perfect. 
What  the  primitive  flections  were,  and  whether 
any  of  them  have  survived  to  later  times,  we  can- 
not say.  It  may  be  that  all  the  inflections  of 
Schleicher's  parent-speech  will  yet  be  traced  back 
to  independent  vocables  ;  but  this,  improbable  as 
it  is  in  the  highest  degree,  will  only  show  that  the 
new  suffixes,  as  soon  as  they  became  grammatical 
signs,  were  modelled  after  a  fore-existing  pattern  ; 
they  imply  that  the  language  was  already  inflec- 
tional, and  inclined  to  assimilate  everything  which 
modified  the  meaning  of  a  sentence  to  the  prevail- 
ing inflectional  type.  In  the  agglutinative  dialects, 
they  would  have  remained  independent  or  semi- 
independent  words.  There  is  little  to  be  gained 
on  the  opposite  side  by  bringing  forward  instances 
in  which,  during  historical  times,  an  independent 
vocable  has  gradually  grown  into  a  flectional  suffix. 
Thus  ama-j'ui  has  become  amavi,  and  the  stem  of 
fero  has  produced  candela-bru-m,  though  even 
here  the  flectional  suffix  properly  so  called  is  dis- 
tinct from  the  agglutinated  word,  and  has  to  be 
added  in  order  to  express  the  relation  of  the  whole 


THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT.       161 

compound  to  the  rest  of  the  sentence.  But,  in  the 
first  place,  the  very  possibility  of  thus  turning  an 
agglutinated  affix  into  an  inflection  shows  that 
inflection  was  already  the  characteristic  and  rule 
of  the  language.  Then,  in  the  second  place,  we 
must  bear  in  mind  that  Glottology  is  an  historical 
science,  and  the  historical  sciences  imply  change 
and  progress  with  the  change  and  progress  of 
time.  Consequently  what  holds  good  of  a  late 
period  in  the  history  of  a  language  does  not  neces- 
sarily hold  good  of  an  early  period.  The  Coptic, 
which  once  formed  its  words  by  means  of  affixes, 
now  employs  prefixes  instead ;  and  the  rich  crea- 
tiveness,  the  varied  mobility,  which  distinguishes 
the  older  Aryan  dialects,  disappears  more  and 
more  the  nearer  we  approach  our  own  day  and 
our  own  stereotyped  mother-tongue.  Just  as  civi- 
lisation blunts  the  keenness  of  our  senses  and  the 
quick  perception  of  the  influences  of  nature,  it 
tends  to  dry  up  the  springs  of  speech,  and  to  con- 
fine us  to  a  conventional  round  of  already  existing 
words.  We  can  no  more  argue  from  the  analogy 
of  modern  Aryan  languages  to  their  early  condi- 
tion than  we  can  from  the  linguistic  phenomena  of 
the  Aryan  family  to  those  of  other  families.  To 
do  so  is  to  repeat  in  another  form  the  error  that 
would  make  the  laws  deduced  from  an  examination 
of  this  family  alone  of  universal  validity.      The  last 

L 


162      THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT. 

objection  that  may  be  produced  against  this  appeal 
to  historical  instances  of  agglutination  passing 
into  flection,  is  that  the  later  meaning  of  the  case- 
suffixes,  properly  so  called,  could  not  be  theirs  if 
they  were  independent  words  ;  and  how  then  can  we 
tell  if  they  ever  were  independent  words  ?  As  I 
have  so  often  said  before,  we  must  not  go  beyond 
our  data  in  Glottology,  and  these  present  to  us  the 
case-suffixes,  for  example,  already  in  existence  as 
inflections  or  modifying  affixes.  When  Compara- 
tive Philology  first  becomes  cognisant  of  an  Aryan 
language,  these  suffixes  are  simply  grammatical 
forms ;  there  is  no  trace,  so  far  as  meaning  goes, 
of  their  ever  having  been  separate  or  agglutinated 
particles.  Now  their  meaning  expresses  the  rela- 
tion of  the  several  parts  of  the  sentence  to  one 
another ;  and  we  may  well  wonder  how  it  could 
come  about  that,  when  the  primitive  Aryan  first 
awoke  to  a  consciousness  of  these  relations,  and 
began  to  distinguish  between  them,  he  denoted 
them  by  independent  words,  and  yet,  when  his 
consciousness  became  clearer  and  more  distinct,  all 
vestiges  of  their  original  nature  were  lost,  and  a 
backward  step  was  made  in  the  analysis  of  the 
sentences.  This,  of  course,  grants  the  assumption 
that  the  independent  origin  of  the  case-suffixes  has 
been  made  out,  which  is  very  far  indeed  from 
being  the  case;  and  that,  as  independent  vocables, 


THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT.       163 

they  were  actual  words,  with  real  meaning  and 
expressiveness,  not  the  vague  and  indeterminate 
"  pronominal  ''  elements  to  which  the  modern 
school  of  philologists  would  refer  them.  Indeed, 
when  once  this  useful  but  impalpable  "  pronominal 
root "  is  introduced,  the  whole  question  is  virtu- 
ally decided.  Every  tittle  of  evidence  for  the 
theory  derived  from  analogy  is  abandoned.  The 
agglutinative  languages  do  not  express  the  rela- 
tions of  grammar  by  pronominal  suffixes — indeed, 
it  is  hard  to  see  how  they  could  do  so — but  by  the 
help  of  postfixed  substantives  and  verbs  or  parti- 
ciples, each  with  a  definite  signification  of  its  own. 
Thus  the  postposition  hjda  in  Ostiak  is  fyt9  "the 
middle  ;  "  the  locative  pir  in  Samoiedic  Jurakish  is 
"  height;  "  the  possessive  lal  in  Accadian  is  "  to 
fill."  So,  again,  the  Bornu  of  Africa  says  "  side  " 
for  "  with,"  "head  "  for  "  on,"  "  place  "  for  "  to;" 
and  the  Yei  would  express  "  it  is  within  the 
house  "  by  a  be  keneburo,  "  in  the  house's  belly." 
It  is  the  same  in  the  isolating  languages.  The 
"  empty  words  "  or  determinative  particles  of 
Chinese  mean  "interior"  {chung,  nei,  li,  the  sigus 
of  the  locative),  "  to  use  "  (y,  which  marks  the 
instrumental),  and  so  on.1     Nor  is  it  different  in 

1  Mr  Edkins  writes  to  me  :  "  My  inquiries  have  led  me  to  the 
conclusion  that  the  Turanian  case-suffixes  are  always  pronouns 
when   the  possessive   and  objective  are   in    question.       In   such 


164      THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT. 

the  Aryan  family  itself,  wherever  we  can  histori- 
cally trace  the  passage  of  an  independent  word 
into  a  semi-flection.  Either  it  is  a  personal  pro- 
noun, as  in  the  person-endings  of  the  verb,  or  a 
substantive  like  -dom  and  -head;  never  an  imagi- 
nary "  pronominal  root."  But  these  semi-flections 
all  belong  to  the  later  epoch  of  Indo-European 
speech,  when  the  fresh  period  of  youth  and  crea- 
tiveness  had  passed  away ;  and  to  assert  that 
because  the  High  German  taubheit  is  compounded 
with  keit,  the  A.-S.  Md,  "  character  "  or  "  rank," 

instances  the  case-particles  never  differ  in  form  from  common 
demonstrative  roots — e.g.,  Tibetan  and  Mongol  locative,  instru- 
mental and  dative  particles,  can  only  be  substantives  and  verbs, 
just  as  possessives  and  objectives  can  only  be  demonstratives.  In 
Chinese  we  have  a  clear  and  instructive  example  of  the  identity  of 
the  demonstrative,  the  objective,  and  the  possessive  in  che,  old  form  ti, 
which  has  all  three  of  these  uses."  Bohtlingk,  in  the  Introduction 
to  his  great  work  "  Ueber  die  Sprache  der  Jakuten,"  upholds  the 
same  view  against  Schott  in  the  case  of  the  Turkish-Tatar  lan- 
guages ;  and  Castrdn  identifies  the  termination  of  the  Zyrianian  ac- 
cusative with  the  affixed  first  personal  pronoun,  while  he  assigns 
the  ending  ct  or  t,  which  is  sometimes  attached  to  the  Ostiak  ac- 
cusative, to  the  affixed  third  personal  pronoun  ("  Versuch  einer 
ostjakischen  Sprachlehre,"  p.  28).  In  Accadian,  however,  the  ac- 
cusative has  no  distinctive  mark,  while  none  of  the  case-endings 
has  a  pronominal  origin.  It  is  safer  to  abide  by  the  evidence  of 
this  oldest  specimen  of  agglutinative  speech  than  to  assume  the 
pronominal  origin  of  those  case-endings  in  modern  dialects  of  whose 
real  derivation  we  are  ignorant.  The  cases  of  the  old  Semitic  noun 
are  formed  by  a  mere  change  of  the  final  vowel,  and  the  machinery 
by  which  grammatical  relations  have  been  denoted  in  one  language 
may  just  as  well  have  been  employed  in  another.  See  above,  note 
on  p.  151. 


THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT.       165 

its  earlier  representative,  daubitha  must  be  simi- 
larly compounded  with  a  "  pronominal  "  element, 
is  to  defy  all  the  principles  of  scientific  inquiry. 
The  pronominal  root  is  a  philological  myth,  which 
owes  its  origin  to  the  supposed  necessity  of  de- 
veloping an  inflectional  language  out  of  an  agglu- 
tinative one.  Such  forms  as  daubitha  will  have 
been  flectional  from  the  first.  The  formal  element 
existed  before  the  significant  element  was  added  to 
make  it  a  flection ;  and  this  genesis  of  inflection, 
this  rise  of  new  flections,  can  be  tested  and  con- 
firmed by  historical  instance-.  Thus  the  Teutonic 
idioms  have  adapted  the  ablaut  or  change  in  the 
vowel  of  the  root  to  the  expression  of  the  distinc- 
tion between  the  tenses  of  the  verb,  thus  making- 
it  inflectional ;  while  it  remains  in  Sanskrit  a  mere 
phonetic  unmeaning  modification  of  the  vowel,  the 
mechanical  result  of  the  accent.  So  again  the 
Sanskrit  verbal  termination  -ay ami  has  been  split 
up  into  the  three  Greek  endings  -aco,  -oco,  and 
-e&),  and  these  have  been  utilised  in  many  instances 
to  set  forth  different  shades  of  meaning,  -oco  being 
appropriated  to  a  transitive  signification,  -eco  to  an 
intransitive  one,  and  -aco  floating  between  the 
two.  IIoXefjLeco,  for  instance,  is  to  "  wage  war ;  " 
7ro\eyLtoco,  "to  make  enemies."  Such  cases  are 
more  instructive  than  pages  of  indefinite  discourse 
on  the  pronominal  ta  or  ya,  and  they  display  the 


166      THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT. 

inextinguishable  instinct  of  inflection  working  in 
Aryan  speech  late  down  into  the  historical  period. 
If  we  are  to  listen  to  the  testimony  of  facts,  the 
agglutinative  stage  is  a  baseless  dream,  however 
convenient  it  may  be  for  the  purposes  of  provi- 
sional classification.1 


1  Professor  Whitney,  in  his  interesting  "  Oriental  and  Linguistic 
Studies"  (p.  284),  flies  off  into  the  following  tirade  against  a  mis- 
understood theory  : — "  There  is  here  and  there  an  ultra-conserva- 
tive, who  will  believe  only  so  far  as  he  is  forced  by  unequivocal 
testimony,  and,  while  he  confesses  the  later  formative  elements  of 
speech  to  be  wrought  out  of  independent  words,  refuses  to  infer 
that  the  older  are  of  the  same  character,  preferring  to  hold  that 
there  was  some  mysterious  and  inscrutable  difference  between  the 
ancient  and  modern  tongues  as  regards  their  principle  of  growth  ; 
and  we  even  meet  occasionally  with  a  man  who  has  done  good  ser- 
vice and  won  repute  in  some  department  of  philology,  and  who  yet 
commits  the  anachronism  of  believing  that  endings  and  suffixes 
sprouted  out  of  roots  by  an  internal  force.  But  these  are  men  with 
whom  it  is  vain  to  reason  ;  they  must  be  left  to  their  idiosyncrasies, 
and  not  counted  in  as  bearing  a  share  in  the  progress  of  modern 
linguistic  science.  There  are  also,  of  course,  many  whose  studies 
iu  language  have  not  gone  far  enough  to  show  them  the  logical 
necessity  of  the  views  we  have  described  [viz.,  the  development 
theory]  ;  but  they,  too,  are  to  be  reckoned  as  in  the  rear  of  the 
present  movement."  Hard  words,  however,  are  not  arguments  ; 
and  I,  for  one,  hold  the  development  theory  to  be  a  false  though 
attractive  assumption,  simply  because  all  science  must  rest  on  the 
law  of  the  uniformity  of  nature,  and  consequently  the  formative 
principle  at  work  in  modern  times  must  be  of  the  same  character  as 
that  at  work  in  the  earliest  period.  To  infer  that  because  the  later 
formative  elements  are  of  a  certain  nature,  the  older  formative  ele- 
ments must  therefore  be  of  the  same  nature,  is  in  the  highest 
degree  illogical  ;  indeed,  it  directly  contradicts  the  very  hypothesis 
Professor  Whitney  is  maintaining,  since  the  formative  elements  of 
an  agglutinative  language  are  wholly  different  from  those  of  an 


THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT.       167 

The  Aryan  languages  have  always  been  inflec- 
tional, so  far  as  Glottology  has  any  cognisance  of 
them.  Beyond  that,  the  Aryan  must  be  dealt 
with  by  physical  science ;  and  whatever  the  latter 
may  demonstrate,  even  that  he  was  the  eldest-born 
of  a  gorilla,  we  feel  sure  of  this  much,  that  his 
brain  could  produce  only  an  inflectional  language — 


inflectional  language.  To  say  that  an  agglutinative  suffix  is  iden- 
tical with  a  flection  is  to  confound  two  very  different  and  unlike 
things.  Now  the  principle  in  an  inflectional  speech  which  turns 
such  words  as  lie,  ly,  into  flections  is  one  which  must  have  been 
at  work  from  the  beginning  ;  such  words  only  become  flections 
through  the  analogy  and  structure  of  the  rest  of  the  language,  and 
of  the  instinct  which  underlies  it.  They  would  never  have  become 
flections  had  the  language  not  been  inflectional  already.  To  imagine 
that  mere  phonetic  change  can  produce  mental  and  formative 
change  is  to  confuse  material  and  form,  and  to  ignore  the  fact  that 
the  relations  of  grammar  are  purely  intellectual.  "We  see  instances 
in  plenty  of  the  synthetic  passing  into  the  analytic,  but  the  reverse 
process  is  contrary  to  experience.  Cases  like  aimerai  and  amavi 
are  not  to  the  point.  The  synthetic  comes  first,  the  analytic  last ; 
such  is  the  general  conclusion  of  modern  science,  and  this  principle 
of  differentiation  has  been  traced  by  Mr  Herbert  Spencer  through 
the  organic  and  moral  world.  The  most  primitive  grammars,  such 
as  that  of  the  Eskimaux,  show  us  the  greatest  synthetic  complexity. 
In  fact,  the  development  theory  commits  the  old  mistake  of  assum- 
ing that  what  is  logically  first  and  simplest  is  historically  so,  whereas 
the  converse  is  really  the  case.  We  begin  with  the  jelly-fish,  we 
end  with  man.  I  need  hardly  refer  to  the  grotesque  misrepre- 
sentation which  speaks  of  "  endings  and  suffixes  sprouting  out  of 
roots  by  an  internal  force."  Material  and  form  are  co-ordinate  and 
co-existent  ;  we  cannot  have  one  without  the  other  ;  and  the  idea 
that  form  is  posterior  to  material  is  the  fallacy  which  lies  at  the 
bottom  of  the  development  theory,  and  of  the  inability  of  its  advo- 
cates to  understand  the  arguments  which  are  urged  against  it. 


168      THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT. 

that  is,  could  view  things  and  their  relations  only 
in  a  particular  way,  as  soon  as  he  came  to  speak 
consciously,  and  to  be  a  subject  for  Comparative 
Philology.  What  animal-like  sounds  he  may  have 
uttered  before  that  time  we  do  not  know;  it  is 
sufficient  that  his  first  endeavours  to  form  a  lan- 
guage took  the  direction  of  inflection. 

What  has  been  said  of  the  hypothetical  agglu- 
tinative stage  of  Aryan  speech  applies  with  still 
greater  force  to  the  so-called  isolating  stage.  It 
is  true  that  we  can  trace  the  lexicon  back  to  a  cer- 
tain number  of  roots,  and  it  is  assumed  that  these 
roots,  in  which  substantive,  adjective,  and  verb  lay 
implicit  in  an  equally  vague  and  chaotic  state,  once 
formed  a  language.  Unfortunately  we  are  not 
acquainted  with  the  exact  nature  of  these  roots. 
We  know  them  only  in  so  far  as  they  are  the  ulti- 
mate elements  of  later  words.  But  to  assert  that 
there  was  a  time  when  men  conversed  by  means  of 
these  roots  alone  is  altogether  unwarranted.1     For 

1  The  development  theory  will  be  found  stated  in  its  most  extreme 
form  in  Whitney's  "Language and  the  Study  of  Language,"  p.  256. 
He  there  says,  "  Indo-European  language,  with  all  its  fulness  and 
inflective  suppleness,  is  descended  from  an  original  monosyllabic 
tongue  ;  our  ancestors  talked  with  one  another  in  single  syllables, 
indicative  of  the  ideas  of  prime  importance,  but  wanting  all  desig- 
nation of  their  relations  ;  and  .  .  .  out  of  these,  by  processes  not 
differing  in  their  nature  from  those  which  are  still  in  operation  in 
our  own  tongue,  was  elaborated  the  marvellous  and  varied  structure 
of  all  the  Indo-European  dialects.     Such  is,  in  fact,  the  belief  which 


THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT.       169 

anything  we  know,  the  roots  might  have  received 
flections,  long  since  worn  away;  indeed,  Pott  and 
his  school  have  endeavoured  to  make  out  that  a 
large  number  of  our  radicals  are  really  compounds, 
though  with  imperfect  success.  Nor  do  we  know 
whether  the  roots  ever  existed  except  as  so  many 
unconscious  types,  after  which  inflectional  words 
were  fashioned,  and  which  were  first  extracted 
from  these  by  the  grammarians,  just  as  nowadays 
we  might  take  some  foreign  vocable  and  fit  it  to 
numberless  suffixes  without  ever  using  the  vocable 
itself.  It  seems  clear  that  we  must  account  in 
this  way  for  the  numerous  roots,  or  rather  verbs, 
in    Semitic  with   similar    meanings   and  connate 

the  students  of  language  have  reached,  and  now  hold  with  full  con- 
fidence." 

We  can  only  say  that  their  confidence  is  easily  gained,  and  be- 
trays a  strange  lack  of  logical  insight.  How  could  men  talk  with 
one  another  in  single  isolated  syllables  which  wanted  "  all  designa- 
tion of  their  relations  ?  "  Such  a  jargon  would  do  very  well  for  an 
excited  meeting  of  religious  enthusiasts,  who  would  express  their 
feelings  by  unintelligible  outcries,  but  such  a  disconnected  series  of 
exclamations  could  not  be  employed  for  conversation.  Gestures 
alone  could  not  be  a  substitute  for  all  designation  of  relations.  And 
the  belief  must  indeed  be  large  which  can  imagine  that  out  of  this 
antithesis  of  all  that  is  meant  by  language,  language  could  take  its 
rise,  much  less  that  it  was  language,  and  the  basis  and  beginning 
of  the  inflectional  group  of  tongues.  Language  cannot  contain  its 
antithesis,  not-language,  at  its  bottom,  nor  disclose  it  to  the  re- 
searches of  the  inquirer.  When  Professor  Whitney  goes  on  to 
compare  Chinese  with  this  "rudimentary  "  state  of  things,  he  vir- 
tually gives  up  his  own  cause.  Chinese  does  denote  relations,  and 
the  words  of  Chinese  are  not  roots. 


170      THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT. 

letters,  which  cannot  be  derived  either  from 
one  another  or  from  some  common  root.  In 
any  case,  we  must  not  suppose  that  the  ima- 
gimniy  isolating  stage  of  Aryan  really  resembled 
the  phenomena  of  actually  existing  isolating  lan- 
guages. In  these  the  word  is  a  sentence,  and 
the  reading  of  the  sentence  is  determined  by 
the  relation  which  it  bears  to  other  sentence- 
words.  Thus  the  Chinese  fit  tze,  "  son  of  the 
father,"  or  ngo  td  ni,  "  I  beat  thee,"  are  as 
truly  analytical  and  determinate  as  their  English 
or  Latin  equivalents. 

The  "  root-language  "  of  the  Aryans,  however, 
as  discovered  by  grammatical  analysis,  did  not 
contain  any  sentences  at  all.  A  sentence  im- 
plies a  mental  judgment,  a  limitation  of  one  idea 
by  another  ;  and  the  vague,  indefinite  nature  of  the 
root  excludes  a  judgment  altogether.  As  soon  as 
a  judgment  was  arrived  at,  it  was  expressed  by 
means  of  inflections,  or,  as  the  advocates  of  the 
development  theory  would  say,  of  pronominal 
agglutinations.  Thus,  in  Chinese,  just  as  in  Eng- 
lish, the  same  word  may  be  either  a  verb  or  a 
substantive  or  an  adverb,  but  not  at  the  same 
time  and  in  the  same  place  ;  but  this  is  exactly 
what  the  Aryan  root  was,  a  kind  of  phonetic 
germ,  which  contained  within  itself  the  poten- 
tiality of  becoming  any  one  of  the  several  parts 


THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT.       171 

of  speech.  But  until  this  was  realised  there 
was  no  language,  since  Glottology  begins  with 
the  sentence ;  there  was  only  an  embryonic  chaos 
of  unconscious  thought.  When  first  we  find  this 
thought  becoming  conscious  and  embodying  itself 
in  language,  we  find  also  the  phenomena  of  in- 
flection. 

It  is  because  the  fact  that  language  is  the  out- 
ward expression  of  conscious  thought  has  been  for- 
gotten that  it  has  been  supposed  that  the  ultimate 
analysis  of  phonetic  sounds  is  identical  with  the  first 
beginnings  of  speech.  It  really  gives  us  only  the 
beginnings  of  the  mechanical  part  of  speech — the 
instruments  of  language.  It  is  like  the  analysis 
of  colours  in  painting.  The  whole  misconception 
depends  upon  the  false  view  that  makes  the  bare 
word  the  starting-point  of  philology,  and  the  be- 
lief that  the  history  of  the  Aryan  family  is  the 
history  of  language  generally.  Language  is  an 
art  as  well  as  a  science  ;  it  is  historical,  not  phy- 
sical ;  and  in  studying  it,  therefore,  we  must  not 
put  out  of  sight  the  conscious  effort  exercised  on 
its  growth  by  the  mind  of  man.  It  is  not  an 
organic  product  merely,  any  more  than  society ; 
and  since  language  is  the  reflection  of  society, 
whatever  has  influenced  and  determined  the  deve- 
lopment of  the  one  will  similarly  have  affected 
the  development  of  the  other.     This   is  the  side 


172      THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT. 

upon  which  the  hypothesis  of  a  threefold  evo- 
lution has  chiefly  been  assailed  by  Pott.  We 
may  call  language  an  organism  metaphorically, 
but  the  metaphor  must  not  be  pressed  too 
far.  There  is  no  inner  necessity  in  language 
to  expand  like  the  seed  into  the  tree,  or  the 
caterpillar  into  the  chrysalis  and  the  butterfly, 
any  more  than  there  is  in  thought  and  in  society. 
An  isolating  dialect  does  not  necessarily  become 
agglutinative,  or  an  agglutinative  one  inflectional; 
nor  conversely  must  an  inflectional  dialect  neces- 
sarily have  passed  through  the  stages  of  isolation 
and  agglutination.  The  society  of  modern  Europe 
is  not  the  descendant  of  the  society  of  ancient 
Babylonia  or  China  :  we  can  trace  its  ancestry 
back  through  the  middle  ages  to  Christian  Rome 
and  Periklean  Greece,  and  far  beyond  that  to  the 
herdsmen  of  the  Hindu  Kush ;  but  its  general 
complexion,  its  fundamental  principles,  its  innate 
tendencies,  have  always  been  the  same,  and  must 
always  continue  to  be  so.  External  circumstances 
will  modify  and  alter ;  but  large  as  their  influence 
may  be,  there  yet  remains  an  insoluble,  unchange- 
able residuum,  which  we  call  the  character  or  in- 
stincts of  race.  The  intellectual  growth  of  the 
Negro  stops  at  fourteen  ;  and  although  he  has  been 
brought  into  close  contact  with  the  civilisations  of 
the  ancient  and  the  modern  world — with  old  Egypt 


THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT.       173 

and  Carthage,  with  Greece,  Alexandria,  and  Rome, 
with  the  Arab,  the  Latin,  and  the  Teuton — he  is 
still  in  form,  and  colour,  and  nature  what  he  was 
when  he  first  appears  in  the  sepulchral  chambers 
of  the  Pharaohs.  For  racial  change  we  need  a 
period  of  time  far  exceeding  the  miserable  six 
thousand  years  of  history  and  civilisation ;  we 
must  go  back  to  those  incalculably  distant  centuries 
when  our  earliest  progenitors  trembled  before  the 
mammoth  and  the  cave-bear,  and  their  animal - 
like  condition  allowed  the  full  play  of  natural 
selection.  But  with  this  semi-human  epoch  of 
mankind,  Grlottology  has  nothing  to  do.  With 
language  consciousness  begins,  and  the  several 
families  of  humanity  have  their  characters  already 
formed,  their  modes  of  thought  already  deter- 
mined in  an  earlier  period.  Without  doubt  the 
three  stages  of  language  mark  successive  levels  of 
civilisation  :  this  much  is  proved  by  the  subversion 
of  the  one  civilisation  by  the  other  ;  but  each  was 
the  highest  effort  and  expression  of  the  race  which 
carried  it  out,  and  the  form  which,  by  the  constitu- 
tion of  the  mind  of  the  race,  each  was  necessitated 
to  assume.  Mankind  progresses  as  a  whole,  but 
the  several  steps  of  advance  are  made  by  the  appear- 
ance of  different  races  on  the  scene,  each  with  his 
mission,  each  with  his  predetermined  method  of 
accomplishing    it.      The   infusoria    which    to-day 


174      THEORY  OF  THREE  STAGES  OF  DEVELOPMENT. 


cover  the  bottom  of  the  Atlantic  have  not  changed 
since  the  era  of  the  chalk  ;  but  for  all  that,  the 
world  of  life  on  the  globe  has  been  steadily  im- 
proving and  growing,  although  the  lion  has  always 
been  a  lion,  and  the  dog  a  dog. 


CHAPTER    Y. 

THE   POSSIBILITY   OF   MIXTURE  IN    THE    GRAMMAR   AND 
VOCABULARY   OF   A   LANGUAGE. 

The  fallacy  of  imagining  that  language  is  a  sure 
index  of  race  still  crops  up  occasionally,  especially 
in  second  and  third-hand  writers,  who  undertake 
to  acquaint  the  general  public  with  the  results  of 
Comparative  Philology.  We  still  not  unfrequently 
hear  that  we  have  to  claim  kindred  with  the  black 
Hindu  of  Southern  India,  not  on  the  ground  of  a 
common  tongue,  but  of  a  common  descent.  A 
very  little  consideration  is  sufficient  to  dispel  the 
illusion.  The  Aryan  tribes  of  the  Rig-Veda  who 
invaded  India  could  not  have  been  very  numerous, 
and  it  was  long  before  they  spread  beyond  the 
north-western  corner  of  the  peninsula.  Conse- 
quently the  chances  are  that  a  modern  Hindu 
will  be  altogether,  or  in  great  part,  of  aboriginal 
blood,  unless  he  be  a  Brahmin ;  and  even  the 
Brahmin  is  to  be  found,  according  to  Dr  Hunter, 
among  the  lowest  castes,  showing  that  his  purity 


176  THE  POSSIBILITY  OF  MIXTURE  IN  THE 

of  parentage  was  not  always  regarded  during 
the  disintegrating  period  of  Buddhist  democracy. 
Who,  again,  can  say  how  far  the  blood  of  our  own 
ancestors  was  contaminated  during  their  distant 
migrations  before  they  entered  this  country  ?  We 
have  only  to  look  at  such  cases  as  the  Kelts  of 
Cornwall,  who  speak  English,  or  the  Jews  of 
Southern  Austria,  who  believe  Spanish  to  be  their 
sacred  language,  to  see  how  little  we  can  argue 
from  language  to  race.  Like  the  Lapps  and  Finns 
in  Europe,  the  Melanesians  and  Papuans  have  the 
same  tongue,  but  physiologically  are  essentially 
different ;  and  the  only  question  that  we  can  ask 
in  regard  to  them  is,  To  whom  did  the  language 
first  belong,  and  which  of  the  two  races  borrowed 
it  from  the  other  ?  Language  is  the  mirror  of 
society,  and  accordingly  will  reflect  every  social 
change.  Wherever  the  social  pressure  is  strong 
enough,  either  through  conquest,  or  personal  in- 
terests, or  other  causes,  the  inferior  people  will 
adopt  the  idiom  of  the  superior.  Thus  Keltic 
disappeared  before  Latin  in  Gaul  and  Spain,  and 
social  disadvantages  have  driven  Welsh  into  the 
mountains  and  the  cottages.  Thus,  too,  Slavonic 
became  extinct  in  Prussia  in  1683,  although  five 
hundred  years  before  this  date  German  was  unknown 
in  the  country.1     Where  the  conquerors  themselves 

1  Ou  the  island  of  Riigen,  Frau  Gulzin,  who  died  in  1404,  was 


GRAMMAR  AND  VOCABULARY  OF  A  LANGUAGE.       177 

are  not  numerous,  or  where  they  are  less  civil- 
ised than  the  conquered  nation,  the  necessities 
of  everyday  life  and  the  influence  of  literature 
will  cause  them  to  adopt  the  language  of  the 
latter.  Thus  it  was  with  the  Normans  in  France 
and  England,  the  Warings  in  Russia,  and  the 
Franks  in  Gaul.  In  fact,  we  may  lay  it  down  as  a 
general  rule,  that  whenever  two  nations,  equally 
advanced  in  civilisation,  are  brought  into  close 
contact,  the  language  of  the  most  numerous 
will  prevail.  Where,  however,  a  small  body  of 
invaders  bring  a  higher  civilisation  with  them, 
the  converse  is  the  more  likely  to  happen.1  Visi- 
gothic  was  soon  extirpated  in  Spain,  but  English 

the  last  person  who  spoke  Wendish,  according  to  Andree,  in 
his  "  Wendische  Wanderstudien  "  (1874).  Pott  ("  Ungleichheit 
menschlicher  Rassen,"  p.  169)  quotes  from  Chateaubriand  that 
a  "Prussian  poet,"  who  sang  the  deeds  of  the  ancient  heroes  of 
his  land  about  1400,  was  not  understood,  and  a  hundred  nutshells 
were  given  him  as  a  guerdon. 

1  Not  always,  howTever.  Physical  disadvantages,  such  as  climate 
or  want  of  intercommunication,  may  cause  the  lower  race  to  be 
totally  unaffected  by  the  arrival  of  a  small  body  of  more  cultivated 
settlers.  Thus  Scandinavian  colonies  existed  in  Greenland  for 
more  than  five  hundred  years,  and  left  numerous  relics  in  the  shape 
of  ruined  houses  and  other  material  objects.  But  when  Greenland 
was  again  colonised  by  the  Danes  in  the  eighteenth  century,  the 
only  indisputable  Norwegian  word  that  had  made  its  way  into  the 
language  of  the  Eskimaux  was  kona,  "woman,"  suggesting  that  a 
few  women  alone  were  spared  when  the  colonists  were  extirpated. 
The  migratory  habits  of  the  Eskimaux  and  the  long  dark  winter  of 
the  north  will  sufficiently  explain  the  little  influence  of  the  higher 
race  and  language  upon  the  lower. 

M 


178  THE  POSSIBILITY  OF  MIXTURE  IN  THE 

flourishes  in  India,  and  Dutch  at  the  Cape.  Con- 
quest, however,  is  not  the  sole  agent  in  producing 
social  revolutions  extensive  enough  to  cause  a  total 
change  of  language.  Before  the  Christian  era, 
Hebrew,  Assyrian,  and  Babylonian  had  been  sup- 
planted by  Aramaic,  which  was  fast  tending  to 
become  the  common  dialect  of  the  Semitic  world, 
like  Arabic  in  later  times.  It  was  the  language 
of  commerce  and  diplomacy,  and  this  was  suffi- 
ciently strong  to  outweigh  the  conservative  influ- 
ence of  a  sacred  literature.1 

In  all  the  instances  just  given,  with  one  or  two 
exceptions,  it  will  be  noticed  that  a  thoroughgoing 
exchange  of  language  has  taken  place  only  among 
members  of  the  inflectional  family.  There  is  hardly 
an  example  of  an  inflectional  dialect  being  ex- 
changed for  an  isolating  or  agglutinative  one,  or 

1  Several  examples  of  the  adoption  of  a  foreign  language  will  be 
found  given  in  Waitz,  "  Anthropologic  der  Naturvolker,"  vol.  i. 
{Engl,  transit.,  pp.  249-252).  Thus  the  Bosnian  soldiers  sent  by 
the  Sultan  Selim  in  1420  into  Lower  Nubia  have  lost  their  mother- 
tongue,  and  the  Negroes  of  Haiti  have  adopted  French.  Various 
American  tribes  have  exchanged  their  own  idioms  for  Spanish  and 
Portuguese ;  the  natives  of  S.  Salvador,  Nicaragua,  Costa  llica,  S. 
Margaretha,  l'.aradero,  Quilmos,  Calchaguy  and  Chiloe  taking  to 
Spanish,  and  the  Indiana  of  Rio  Janeiro  to  Portuguese  (Latham, 
Jrl.  Il.G.S.,xx.  p.  189  ;  Humboldt  and  Bonpland,  i.  p.  467  ;  Azara, 
"  Voy.  dans  l'Am.  merid,"  ii.  p.  217.,  King  and  Fitzroy,  i. 
p.  278;  Von  Eschwege,  "Jrl.  v.  Brasil,"  ii.  p.  16).  According  to 
Humboldt  and  Bonpland  (v.  p.  774),  "a  million  of  the  aborigines 
of  America  have  exchanged  their  native  for  an  European  language." 


GRAMMAR  AND  VOCABULARY  OF  A  LANGUAGE.   179 

vice  versa.  The  question  accordingly  arises,  whether 
such  an  occurrence  is  possible  ?  Can  an  individual 
or  a  nation,  whose  mind  has  been  accustomed  to 
regard  the  nature  of  things  from  a  particular  point 
of  view,  be  taught  to  express  himself  under  alto- 
gether different  forms  of  thought?  Here  we  have 
nothing  to  do  with  the  possibility  of  an  isolating 
speech  developing  of  its  own  accord  into  an  agglu- 
tinative or  inflectional  one.  The  settlement  of  this 
question  is  not  affected  either  way  by  an  artificial 
education,  in  which  the  mental  faculties  of  one 
people  are  domesticated,  as  it  were,  into  the  ways 
of  thought  of  another,  to  revert,  like  the  domes- 
ticated animal  when  again  left  to  itself,  into  its 
old  nature,  its  original  expression  of  psychological 
habits.  A  child  can  learn  as  readily  the  verna- 
cular of  Canton  as  the  language  of  London.  The 
Japanese  show  a  singular  aptitude  in  imitating 
the  externals  of  European  civilisation.  They  may 
yet  produce  a  satisfactory  copy  of  the  philosophy 
of  Aristotle  and  Hegel,  but  I  much  doubt  whether 
they  will  ever  be  anything  more  than  imitations 
and  copies ;  at  any  rate,  experience  is  all  against 
it.  Not  to  speak  of  the  Jewish  and  Arabic  repro- 
ductions of  Plato  and  the  Stagirite,  to  which  I 
alluded  in  the  last  chapter,  we  have  facts  like  that 
of  pigeon-English  at  Canton,  where  the  Chinaman 
has   endeavoured   to   assimilate    English,   or   the 


180  THE  POSSIBILITY  OF  MIXTURE  IN  THE 

Chinook  jargon  of  Oregon,1  or  the  grammarless 
English  of  the  Negro — all  cases  in  which  one  race 
has  read  its  modes  of  thought  into  the  grammar 
of  another,  where  it  has  not  been  able  to  resist 
the  encroachment  and  victory  of  the  latter.  And 
yet  English  is,  of  all  inflectional  languages,  not 
even  excluding  Persian,  the  easiest  to  acquire  ; 
and  the  extent  to  which  it  has  pushed  the  clear 
probing  of  analysis,  and  shaken  off  the  trammels 
of  unpractical  flection,  make  it  deserve  to  be,  what 
Grimm  prophesied  it  would  become,  the  language 
of  the  civilised  world.  Not  less  striking,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  the  preservation  of  the  Basque ; 
although  driven  by  a  Keltic  invasion  into  the 
extreme  corner  of  Spain,  it  has  yet  lasted  out  all 
the  vicissitudes  of  Roman,  Gothic,  and  Moorish 
domination,  instead  of  yielding,  like  its  Keltic 
neighbour,  to  the  influence  of  the  Latin  tongue. 
The  attempt  to  make  one  race  of  men  think  ac- 
cording to  the  forms  of  another  is  forced  and 
unnatural ;  and  however  much  we  may  seem  for  a 
time  to  have  succeeded,  yet,  when  the  pressure  of 
superiority  is  once  removed,  our  pupils  return  to 
the  conceutions  of  their  ancestors,  as  the  dosr  on 
the  prairies  to  his  howling.  Where  the  race  has 
not  reached  a  high  enough   level   of  culture   to 

1  A  dictionary  of  this  curious  lingua  Franca  has  been  published 
by  Gibbs  (Smithson,  Collect.,  No.  101). 


GRAMMAR  AND  VOCABULARY  OF  A  LANGUAGE.   181 

appropriate  the  language  of  its  superior,  it  is  a 
sign  that  the  race  has  done  its  part,  and  must 
pass  away  before  the  coming  of  civilised  man. 
The  Tasmanian  and  his  language,  in  spite  of  every 
effort  to  save  them  on  the  part  of  the  Government, 
have  become  extinct.  Climate  may  save  a  tribe 
and  its  dialect  by  making  it  impossible  for  the 
European  to  settle  in  the  country,  but  in  that  case 
the  dialect  is  preserved  only  because  the  social 
conditions  of  which  it  is  the  expression  are  also 
preserved  through  the  maintenance  of  the  original 
state  of  nature.  Civilisation  inevitably  kills  the 
natural,  unless  the  latter  is  favoured  by  external 
circumstances.  Compatibility  of  existence  on  the 
part  of  two  races  depends  upon  their  being  more 
or  less  nearly  matched  in  culture.  The  greater 
the  distance  between  them,  the  greater  will  be  the 
influence,  socially  and  linguistically,  exercised  by 
the  superior,  until  a  point  is  reached  at  which  it 
will  be  impossible  for  the  lower  to  live  in  the  pre- 
sence of  its  higher  neighbour. 

Linguistically,  the  influence  will  show  itself  in 
the  shape  of  borrowing.  We  have  already  glanced 
at  the  cases  in  which  this  borrowing  extends  to 
the  whole  language,  and  have  suggested  the  ex- 
treme improbability  of  its  taking  place  where  the 
ground  principles  of  the  languages  are  essentially 
different ;   that    is,   where  two  civilisations,  with 


1S2  THE  POSSIBILITY  OF  MIXTURE  IN  THE 

wholly  different  pasts,  confront  one  another  on 
equal  terms,  or  where  the  interval  between  two 
races  is  morally  and  mentally  too  great  to  be 
spanned.  Borrowing,  however,  by  no  means  neces- 
sarily extends  to  the  whole  language.  More  often 
it  applies  only  to  the  vocabulary,  and  loan-words 
are  common  to  all  dialects.  JSTo  people  can  have 
near  neighbours  without  receiving  something:  from 
them  in  the  shape  of  inventions,  products,  or 
social  institutions,  and  these,  almost  inevitably, 
are  adopted  under  their  foreign  names.  The 
French  have  taken  meeting  and  turf  from  us, 
together  with  the  ideas  which  they  denote  ;  we 
have  had  in  return  naive  and  verve.  Where  the 
general  condition  of  two  nations  is  very  unequal, 
the  loan-words  will  be  extremely  numerous  :  in 
Basque,  for  instance,  more  than  one-half  the 
dictionary  is  from  a  foreign  source.  So,  again, 
according  to  Campbell,1  one-half  the  words  in 
Telugu,  as  spoken  in  the  higher  regions,  come 
from  abroad.  The  same  is  asserted  of  Maratha 
by  Ballantine ; 2  and  some  writers  tells  us  that 
nine-tenths  of  the  Hindi  lan^ua^e  is  Sanskrit.  It 
is  clear,  however,  that  the  borrowing  will  not  be 
entirely  upon  the  side  of  the  inferior  ;  whatever  the 
latter  is  able  to  contribute  to  the  superior,  whether 

1  Teloogoo  Gram.,  p.  xix. 

2  Jour,  of  A  ma'.  Orient.  Soc,  iii. 


GRAMMAR  AND  VOCABULARY  OF  A  LANGUAGE.   183 

it  be  a  human  invention  or  a  natural  product,  will 
generally  carry  its  old  name  along  with  it.  Thus 
the  Latin  petorritum,  "  the  four-wheeled,"  is  of 
Gallic  origin,  and  has  been  supposed  to  be  of 
some  importance  in  settling  the  Cymric  affinities 
of  the  Gauls  ; *  glcesiim,  "  amber,"  came  from 
Northern  Germany ;  and  our  own  tomahawk  and 
boomerang  have  been  furnished  by  the  Red  Indians 
and  the  savages  of  Australia.  Maize,  mangle, 
hammock,  canoe,  tobacco,  are  all  derived,  through 
the  medium  of  the  Spanish,  from  the  Haytian 
mahiz,  mangle,  hamaca,  canoa,  and  tabaco.2  In- 
deed, these  loan-words  are  of  the  greatest  use 
in  tracing  the  history  of  languages  by  revealing 
the  geographical  and  social  relationships  of  the 
past. 

Now,  it  has  been  much  questioned  whether  it 
is  possible  for  a  people  to  mix  its  grammar  in  the 
same  way  that  it  can  mix  its  lexicon,  and  adopt 
some  of  the  inflections  or  grammatical  contrivances 
of  another  speech.      Before  the  rise  of  Comparative 

1  Gallic  inscriptions,  however,  point  rather  to  Irish  affinities  ; 
and  my  friend  Mr  J.  Rhys  has  found  that  a  careful  examination 
of  the  Welsh  inscriptions,  from  the  third  to  the  ninth  cen- 
turies, makes  it  clear  that  qu  (c)  originally  existed  in  Cymric,  as 
in  Gaelic,  wherever  we  now  find  p.  It  is  curious,  therefore,  that 
besides petorritum,  pempeclula  is  given  as  the  Gallic  word  for  "  cinq- 
foil,"  where  pempe  would  answer  to  the  modern  Welsh  pump, 
"  five,"  and  not  to  the  Gaelic  ring. 

2  '•'  Humboldt's  Travels"  {Engl,  trans.,  i.  329). 


184  THE  POSSIBILITY  OF  MIXTURE  IN  THE 

Philology,  grammatical  differences  went  for  very 
little ;  and  we  still  hear  "  philologists  "  of  the  old 
school  talking  about  borrowed  grammatical  forms. 
Giottology,    in    which  grammar  forms   the   chief 
fundamentum  divisionis  of  languages,   meets   this 
belief  with    a  decided  negative ;  and  one   of  the 
primary    articles   of  faith  held  by  the   scientific 
student  of  language  at  the  present  time  is,  that 
if  grammatical   inflection  be  borrowed  at  all,   it 
must  be  borrowed  throughout — we  cannot  have  a 
mixed   grammar.     The   whole   of  the   vocabulary 
may  be  derived  from  abroad,  and  yet,  if  the  foreign 
grammar   be   not   learned    at   the    same   time   in 
extenso,  no  part  of  it  will  be  adopted,   and  the 
new    words    will   be   cast  in  the   old    moulds    of 
thought    and    expression.     This    is    pretty   much 
what  has  happened   in  the  case  of  the  Negroes  ; 
though  here,  of  course,  an  attempt  has  also  been 
made  to  learn  the  English  grammar   artificiallv, 
with    what    success,    however,    is    shown    by    the 
Negro  jargon  of  the  United  States.     It  is  hard  at 
first  to  see  what  inducements  there  could  be  for 
one  dialect  to  incorporate  fragments  of  the  gram- 
mar of  another,  as  the  causes  which  have  acted 
upon  a  borrowed  dictionary — inventions,  products, 
social  advantages — are  here  not  applicable;   and 
the    psychological    impossibility    which    we    were 
considering  in  the  last  chapter,  of  forcing  a  race 


GRAMMAR  AND  VOCABULARY  OF  A  LANGUAGE.       185 

to  regard  the  world  with  the  mental  eves  of  its 
neighbour,  would  prevent  the  attempt  if  carried 
on  spontaneously,  and  not  as  the  result  of  artifi- 
cial education.  Nevertheless,  the  proximity  of  two 
languages  implies  that  a  certain  number  of  the 
population  are  bilingual,  and  where  this  is  the  case 
to  any  large  extent,  the  idioms  of  the  two  dialects 
will  often  be  exchanged,  and  along  with  the 
idioms  an  opening  is  made  for  the  introduction  of 
new  grammatical  forms.  Words  like  avenir  and 
contrde  in  French  are  the  result  of  an  endeavour 
to  express  German  idioms  {zukunft,  gegend)  in 
the  Romance  of  the  conquered  provincials ;  and  it 
does  not  seem  very  difficult  to  stretch  this  process 
a  little  farther,  and  adapt  foreign  grammatical 
conceptions  to  the  contents  of  a  native  grammar. 
Thus  it  has  been  asserted  that  the  great  extension 
of  the  plural  formation  in  -s  in  English  was  due 
to  Norman- French  influence,  though  undoubtedly 
the  tendency  had  already  been  felt  before ;  and 
certainly  the  use  of  the  genitive  and  dative  of  the 
personal  pronouns  in  English,  "  of  me,"  "to  me," 
in  the  place  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  min  and  me, 
appears  to  be  modelled  after  the  pattern  of  the 
French.1       So,  again,  Bulgarian  has  imitated   the 

1  Professor  Max  Miiller,  in  Bunsen's  "Philosophy  of  Universal 
History,"  vol.  i.  p.  265,  refers  to  phrases  like  "Zour  honourable 
lettres  contenand,"  aud  "  brekand  the  trewis  "  (Letter  of  Gawin 
Douglas  to  Richard  II.,  1385),  where  the  French  participial  ter- 


186  THE  POSSIBILITY  OF  MIXTURE  IN  THE 

TVallachian  usage  which  attaches  the  article  to 
the  end  of  the  word  (e.g.,  domnul  =  dominus-ille), 
as  in  Danish  and  Swedish,  where  dag -en  —  "  the 
day,"  guld-et,  "  the  gold,"  or  in  the  emphatic 
aleph  of  Aramaic,  which  is  probably  the  postfixed 
article.  And  still  more  strikingly,  Persian  has 
adopted  the  Semitic  order  of  words  so  repugnant 
to  the  general  structure  of  the  Aryan  group, 
Raying,  for  instance,  dil-i-man,  "  heart  of  me,"  for 
'•my  heart,"  ddst-i-  Umar ,  "  hand  of  Omer." 
Conversely  the  Hararite  is  able  to  reverse  the 
Semitic  order,  and  adopt  the  idiom  of  its  non- 
Semitic  neighbours  by  writing  amir  askar,  instead 
of  askar  amir,  "  the  Emir's  army."  The  so-called 
sub-Semitic  dialects  of  Africa  present  us  with  the 
further  phenomenon  of  a  grammar  which  is  de- 
cidedly Semitic  in  its  main  features,  and  which 
yet  makes  use  of  postpositions.  The  natives  of 
Harar,  for  example,  regularly  employ  these  except 
with  the  personal  pronouns,1  and  use  a  postrlxed 

mination  was  no  doubt  assisted  by  the  likeness  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
termination  of  the  gerunds  in  aide.  He  also  compares  the  Greek 
case-endings  (sEncan,  heroa,  &c.)  introduced  into  the  Latin  declen- 
sion (like  the  vclthina,  velthinas,  vdthinam  of  the  Etruscan  Cippus 
Perusinus),  as  well  as  North  Indian  languages  of  Aryan  origin  like 
Assamese,  which  yet  decline  their  nouns  by  the  aid  of  postpositions, 
and  insert  words  indicative  of  plurality  like  bilak,  hont,  or  bur 
between  the  root  and  the  affixes. 

1  See  Prlitorius,   "  Ueber  d.  Sprache  d.  Harar,"  in   "  Zeitschrift 
d.  Deutschen  Morgenliindischen  Gesellschaft,"  1S69. 


GRAMMAR  AND  VOCABULARY  OF  A  LANGUAGE.       187 

-n,  which  seems  a  relic  of  a  primitive  nunnation, 
to  denote  the  accusative.1 

Here  one  of  the  fundamental  principles  of 
Semitic  thought  seems  to  be  violated,  and  the 
attention  drawn  to  the  derivation,  the  ultimate 
elements  of  an  object,  instead  of  to  the  immediate 
presence  of  the  object  itself.  In  the  same  way  a 
close  connection  with  a  foreign  race  seems  to  have 
suggested  to  the  Assyrians  at  one  extremity  of 
the  Semitic  world,  and  to  the  Ethiopians  at  the 
other,  the  utilisation  of  existing  materials  to  denote 
more  exactly  the  temporal  relations  of  the  verb ; 
and  Persian,  which  has  rilled  its  dictionary  with 
Arabic  since  the  days  of  Firdusi  and  his  purely 
Aryan  "  Shahnameh  "  or  "  Book  of  Kings,"  has 
even  gone  so  far  as  to  form  one  of  its  plurals  by 
means  of  the  Arabic  feminine  plural  in  dt,jat,  as 
in  niwaziskdt,  "  favours,"  from  niwdzisk  ;  kala'jat, 
66  castles,"  from  kal'ak.  Practically,  however, 
this  plural  is  confined  to  Arabic  words  ;  conse- 
quently it  will  no  more  be  an  importation  of  a 
foreign  grammatical  form  than  our  own  use  of  the 
Latin  plural-ending  in  such  words  as  termini.  A 
better  instance  would  be  the  Latin   and  English 


1  According  to  Charencey  {Revue  de  Linguistique,  1873,  vol.  i.  pt. 
1,  p.  57),  the  invariable  rule  of  the  ancient  Maya  of  placing  the 
adjective  after  its  substantive  is  sometimes  violated  in  the  modern 
language  through  the  influence  of  Castilian. 


/ 


THE  POSSIBILITY  OF  MIXTURE  IN  THE 

factitive  suffix  in  isso  (izd)  and  -tee,  from  the 
Greek  iC<&.  But  this,  after  all,  is  only  a  suffix,  not 
an  inflection,  and  belongs,  therefore,  rather  to 
the  dictionary  than  to  the  grammar;  the  nuances 
of  grammar  require  the  true  inflections  of  Latin 
%  and  English  to  be  affixed  or  prefixed  to  this  exotic 
-ise;  jiatrissi-t,  civilises,  to  civilise,  and  so  forth. 
On  the  whole,  therefore,  the  evidence  before  us  will 
confirm  the  absolute  denial  which  Glottolosr  gives 
to  the  old  notion  of  a  mixture  of  grammatical 
forms.  Idiom  may  be  imitated,  even  also  the 
conception  of  the  relation  of  subject  and  attribute, 
for  this,  as  logic  teaches,  may  be  looked  at  in  two 
ways  at  the  same  time;  but  beyond  this  language 
does  not  seem  able  to  go.  No  amount  of  inter- 
course and  familiarity  seems  able  to  transmute 
the  inflections  of  a  dialect  into  the  inflections  of 
a  foreign  one,  any  more  than  the  alchemist  was 
able  to  change  iron  or  lead  into  gold.  He  could 
gild  them  over,  but  they  remained  iron  and  lead 
still.  The  forms  of  grammar  are  the  expression 
of  the  mental  life  and  history  of  a  people  ;  they 
imply,  therefore,  the  summing-up  of  all  that 
history  ;  and  accordingly,  although  two  nations 
may  have  started  from  the  same  source  with  a 
common  stock  of  ideas  and  a  common  psychological 
tendency,  yet  in  so  far  as  their  experiences  have 
been    different,   the  formative    elements  of   their 


GRAMMAR  AND  VOCABULARY  OF  A  LANGUAGE.   189 

languages  will  be  different,  and  not  interchange- 
able. How  much  more  will  this  be  the  case  when 
the  two  nations  did  not  start  from  the  same 
source  !  The  grammar  of  pigeon-English  is  not 
English,  but  Chinese  ;  the  grammar  of  Persian 
remains  Aryan.  The  formative  part  of  language 
must  ever  be  the  surest  differentia  of  linguistic 
kinsmanship.1 

Of  late  years,  however,  the  attention  of  European 
scholars  has  been  attracted  to  a  case  of  great 
difficulty  which  apparently  contradicts  our  con- 
clusions. Inscriptions  of  the  Sassanian  era  have 
been  found  in  Persia,  written  in  what  seem  to 
be  two  dialects,  now  generally  termed  Chaldseo- 
Pehlevi  and  Sassanian-Pehlevi.     Greek  transcripts 

i  Spiegel,  in  his  "  Arische  Studien,"  pt.  1,  Nr.  ii.  pp.  45-61,  has 
endeavoured  to  point  out  that  the  Zend  of  the  Avesta  has  been 
influenced  by  the  proximity  of  Semitic  languages  both  grammati- 
cally and  lexically.  He  traces  this  influence  in  the  Zend  use  of  the 
feminine  to  denote  a  neuter  (or  abstract),  and  of  the  dual  to  denote 
pairs,  in  the  employment  of  the  verb  in  the  plural  or  singular  after 
a  dual,  and  of  collective  plurals  (though  Greek,  too,  has  ra  d-qpia 
rpe'xerai)  in  the  accusative  which  expresses  the  condition,  in  the 
verbal  nouns  which  govern  the  cases  of  their  verbs,  in  the  use  of  the 
imperfect  and  infinitive,  and  of  words  like  zagta,  "hand,"  for  mi^ht  " 
(after  the  fashion  of  Semitic),  as  well  as  in  the  occurrence  of  purely 
Semitic  terms  such  as  tanura,  the  Heb.  tannur,  or  nagJca,  the 
Aram,  noskha.  Mr  J.  Rhys,  again,  in  his  Presidential  Address  to 
the  Liverpool  Gordovic  Eisteddfod  of  1874,  stated  the  results  of 
his  examination  of  the  idiomatic  peculiarities  of  the  Keltic  languages, 
which  throw  a  new  light  on  the  early  fortunes  of  that  branch  of 
the  Aryan  family,  and  give  a  fresh  illustration  of  the  way  in  which 


190  THE  POSSIBILITY  OF  MIXTURE  IN  THE 

are  added  in  a  few  instances ;  and  we  are  thu3 
enabled  to  discover  that  the  unknown  dialects 
closely  resemble  the  language  of  books  still  pre- 
served among  the  Parsis  of  Bombay,  to  which  the 
name  of  Huzwaresh  or  Pehlevi  is  ordinarily  given. 
The  writing  of  these  is  extremely  hard  to  decipher, 
owing  to  the  corruption  of  the  characters ;  and  a 
comparison  with  the  inscriptions  and  coin-legends 
on  the  one  hand,  and  the  old  Pazend  dictionaries 
on  the  other,  shows  that  the  traditional  reading 
is  often  very  far  from  the  truth.  Now,  this  Sas- 
sanian-Pehlevi  is  a  most  heterogeneous  mixture 
of  Aryan  and  Semitic,  and  the  mixture  is  not 
confined  to  the  lexicon  alone  ;  it  dominates  equally 
in  the  grammar.  Thus  the  great  inscription  of 
Shahpur    I.    (a.d.   240-273)    at    Nakish-i-Rajab, 

idioms  may  be  borrowed.  Traces  of  Basque  influence,  he  believed, 
were  to  be  found  in  the  incorporation  of  the  pronouns  between  the 
Irish  verb  and  its  prefixes,  a  phenomenon  which  exceptionally 
appeared  in  "Welsh  (as  in  rhy- m-dorai,  "  it  would  concern  me," 
Dofycld  rhy-'n-di>/one$,  "the  Lord  made  us"),  as  well  as  in  the  Breton 
verb  to  have.  So,  too,  the  differentiation  of  the  verb  and  noun, 
which  had  been  effected  at  an  early  time  in  Aryan,  has  been  partly 
effaced  in  Welsh,  as  though  the  latter  language  had  come  into  contact 
with  one  in  which  the  verb  and  noun  were  not  distinguished  ;  thus 
the  infinitive  is  always  a  noun,  and  the  common  construction  myli 
a'eli  (j  minis,  "  I  saw  you,"  is  literally  "  I  your  saw."  The  inflection 
of  the  Welsh  prepositions  (crof,  "for  me,"  erot,  "for  thee,"  erddo, 
"for  him,"  &c),  and  of  the  substantive  yr  ciddof,  "  my  property  " 
("  mine  "),  finds  its  analogue  in  Magyar,  suggesting  that  the  Kelts 
had  once  held  intercourse  with  a  race  which  formed  the  link  be- 
tween the  Basques  and  Finns. 


GRAMMAR  AND  VOCABULARY  OF  A  LANGUAGE.       191 

which  has  a  Greek  translation  attached  to  it,  has 
in  the  first  line  the  following  representatives  of  the 
Greek  jBaaCKeco^  fiaaCkewv,  ND^D  T&D  and  1*0*?D 
ND^D,  while  the  termination  of  the  third  person 
plural  imperfect  of  the  Semitic  verb  in  -un  is  nsed 
as  a  verbal  ending  for  all  persons  and  numbers. 
Here  we  have  not  only  a  fusion  of  the  Aryan  and 
Semitic  order  of  words,  but  also  a  fusion  of  their 
inflections.  If  the  language  were  one  ever  spoken 
by  the  people,  the  decision  of  Glottology  would 
have  to  be  modified,  'and  we  should  be  compelled 
to  admit  the  possibility  of  a  mixture  of  different 
grammars  under  favourable  circumstances.  But 
everything  goes  to  indicate  that  the  dialect  was 
never  a  spoken  one,  at  all  events,  not  outside  the 
literary  coterie  of  the  court.  How  else  could  it 
have  so  entirely  passed  away,  without  leaving  a 
trace  behind  it,  that  the  language  of  Firdusi  in 
the  tenth  century  is  the  purest  Aryan  ? — Semitic 
influence,  notwithstanding  the  Mohammedan  con- 
quest, being  as  little  discernible  in  the  outward 
form  as  in  the  subject-matter  of  the  "  Shahnameh." 
It  was  not  until  after  this  date  that  Semitic  began 
to  penetrate  into  Persia,  and  even  then,  for  the 
most  part,  into  the  vocabulary  alone.  Many  of 
the  grammatical  forms,  moreover,  which  are  bor- 
rowed by  the  Pehlevi  from  the  Semitic  are  used 
without    any    sense    of   their    proper    force    and 


192  THE  POSSIBILITY  OF  MIXTURE  IN  THE 

meaning  :  thus  the  verbal  form  quoted  above  could 
never  have  been  taken  from  a  living  Semitic  dialect 
or  such  curious  hybrids  as  the  prepositions  in  man 
like  levatman,  "  with,"  which  Dr  Haug  connects 
with  jyfy  (rvb). 

On  the  whole,  then,  we  must  consider  this  ano- 
malous Sassanian  as  an  artificial  court-language, 
invented  for  literary  purposes  from  reasons  now 
unknown  to  us,  but  which  never  did,  and  never 
could,  make  its  way  into  conversation.  We  can- 
not adduce  modern  Persian  by  way  of  support, 
since  the  Semitic  order  of  words,  which  it  seems 
to  have  imitated  by  placing  the  governing  noun 
before  the  governed,  as  in  rak-i-bagJiban,  "  path 
of  the  gardener,"  rak-i-ddna,  "  path  of  the  sage," 
may  be  explained  by  regarding  it  as  an  analysis 
of  the  genitive  conception,  as  in  English.  This 
is  borne  out  by  the  fact  that  the  qualifying  word 
may  be  left  out,  and  that  the  connecting  vowel  i 
is  seldom  used  in  familiar  conversation.  If,  how- 
ever, Schott  is  right  in  considering  ra,  the  affix  of 
the  dative  and  accusative,  to  be  borrowed  from  the 
Altaic  postposition  which  we  get  in  the  Mongol  cloto- 
ra,  "  inwards,"  abu-ra,  "to  take,"  Turkish  szong- 
ra,  "  to  the  end,"  a  more  serious  difficulty  arises. 
But  Schott's  suggestion  is  by  no  means  proved, 
and  we  have  to  set  against  it  the  otherwise  uni- 
form experience  of  Glottology.     The  formation  of 


GRAMMAR  AND  VOCABULARY  OF  A  LANGUAGE.   193 

a  case  in  Persian  by  a  suffix  has  its  parallel  in  the 
poetic  vocative,  which  affixes  a  instead  of  using  the 
preposition  ya  or  ai9  just  as  ra  in  the  dative  takes 
the  place  of  the  preposition  da.  Until,  therefore, 
some  more  convincing  example  can  be  brought  for- 
ward, we  must  abide  by  the  belief  that  the  grammar 
of  a  nation  will  always  remain  pure  and  native, 
unless  supplanted  wholly  by  another  through  a 
kind  of  natural  selection,  although  under  certain 
circumstances  foreign  influences  may  occasion  the 
adaptation  of  existing  formative  machinery  to  new 
uses.  It  is  probably  to  this  principle  of  adapta- 
tion that  we  must  ascribe  the  phenomena  which 
have  been  already  mentioned  as  met  with  in  the 
languages  of  Northern  India — the  Bengali,  the 
Assamese,  the  Hindi,  the  Khasiya,  and  others. 
In  these,  the  verb  and  pronouns  are  unmistakably 
Aryan,  while  the  nouns  seem,  on  the  other  hand, 
to  connect  themselves  with  the  agglutinative 
idioms.  Just  as  the  Tamil  plural  affix  gal  or  kar, 
the  Telugu  lu,  has  been  traced  by  Dr  Caldwell  to 
the  common  Dravidian  tala  or  data,  "  a  crowd," 
so  the  plural  suffixes  of  these  languages,  jdti, 
gana,  dig,  varga,  bilak,  data,  are  separate  and  inde- 
pendent words,  which  take  the  place  of  the  usual 
Indo-European  plural  flection.  Indeed,  Professor 
Max  Muller  suggests  that  data  is  nothing  more 
than  the  Dravidian  dala,  which  would  thus  have 

N 


194  THE  POSSIBILITY  OF  MIXTURE  IN  THE 

provided  exactly  the  same  grammatical  machinery 
for  Bengali  as  for  Tamil  and  Telugu.  But  the  non- 
Aryan  character  of  the  nominal  flection  in  these 
North- Indian  languages  does  not  stop  here.  The 
plural  affix  is  intercalated  between  the  noun  and 
the  case-ending,  which  thus  becomes  a  veritable 
postposition,  separable  from  the  base,  and  still 
preserving  vestiges  of  its  original  co-ordinate  rela- 
tion to  the  noun.  In  this  respect  it  resembles 
the  Georgian,  where  the  plural  suffix  bi  is  inserted 
between  the  root  and  the  case-termination.  In 
Assamese,  for  instance,  manuh  is  "  man,"  manuh- 
bilak,  "  men,"  and  from  this  we  get  the  genitive 
manuk-bilak-or,  the  dative  manuk-bilak-oloi,  the  ac- 
cusative manuk-bilak-oky  the  locative  manitk-bilak- 
ot,  and  the  ablative  manuk-bilak-e.  Not  the  least 
striking  part  of  the  matter  is  that  the  suffixes  are 
none  of  them  Aryan.  It  is  this  which  creates  the 
chief  difficulty  of  the  case.  Otherwise  we  might 
compare  such  plurals  as  our  own  man-hind,  which, 
joined  with  words  like  -wards,  as  in  man-kind- 
nards,  are  precisely  analogous  to  the  Indian  forms 
of  which  we  are  speaking,  and  which  only  bear 
witness  to  the  late  analytic  character  of  the 
language,  and  its  loss  of  inflectional  creativeness. 
It  is  this  view  of  the  matter  that  makes  Professor 
Max  Muller  write :  "  We  can  easily  imagine  how 
people  speaking  the  modern  Sanskrit  dialects,  in 


GRAMMAR  AND  VOCABULARY  OF  A  LANGUAGE.   195 

which  the  old  terminations  by  which  the  plural  was 
distinguished  from  the  singular  had  been  worn  off 
almost  entirely,  should,  when  again  feeling  a  want 
to  express  the  idea  of  plurality  more  distinctly, 
have  fixed  upon  a  grammatical  expedient  which, 
from  their  daily  intercourse  with  their  aboriginal 
neighbours,  had  long  been  familiar  to  their  ears 
and  to  their  minds.  The  words  which  they  used 
as  the  exponents  of  plurality  were,  of  course,  taken 
from  the  resources  of  their  own  language  ;  but  the 
idea  of  using  such  words  for  such  a  purpose  seems 
to  have  been  suggested  by  a  foreign  example." 
Now,  this  very  passage  admits  a  non-Aryan  influ- 
ence upon  the  grammar;  and  when  we  consi- 
der the  remarkable  fact  that  the  case-endings  are 
not  Indo-European,  it  is  hard  not  to  allow  that 
something  more  than  mere  influence  has  been  at 
work.  Indeed,  if  it  should  turn  out  that  the 
idioms  we  are  discussing  are  at  bottom  not  Aryan 
but  Dravidian,  this  conclusion,  in  view  of  the 
verbs  and  pronouns,  is  absolutely  necessary.  Un- 
fortunately this  question  is  by  no  means  settled 
as  yet,  and  its  determination  will  depend  upon 
whether  we  find  that  the  fundamental  part  of  the 
dictionary  containing  the  words  of  everyday  life 
belongs  to  Sanskrit  or  to  an  aboriginal  speech. 
But  such  a  determination  cannot  be  made  until 
the  vocabularies  of  these  dialects  are  better  known. 


196  THE  POSSIBILITY  OF  MIXTURE  IN  THE 

Meanwhile  we  may  compare  the  somewhat  parallel 
instance  of  the  so-called  sub-Semitic  tongues.     If 
we  take  the  Berber,  the  Semitic  affinities  of  which 
are  unmistakable,  we  yet  find  the  verbal  conjuga- 
tion admitting  tense  distinctions,  not  formed,  as  in 
Assyrian  and  Ethiopic,  by  a  modification  of  the 
vowel,  but  by  affixes  and  prefixes.     Thus  edh  pre- 
fixed  to   the   aorist  makes  the   present   and  the 
future,  ere  the  future  and  potential,  while  the  affix 
-ed  forms  a  perfect,  and  -an  the  participle.      The 
suffixed  pronoun  is  inserted  between  the  verb  and 
these  prefixes  and  affixes,  and  consequently  pre- 
cedes the  verb  in  many  cases.     This  is  always  its 
position  in  the  case  of  the  participle,  as  in  ey-izran, 
"  seeing    me,"    etk-izran,    "  seeing     him."     The 
definite  tense-determination  of  these  prefixes  as- 
similates  them  rather  to  the  old  Egyptian,   with 
its  innumerable  compound  verbal  forms,  than  to 
the  Arabic  use  of  carta  and  kad ;  but  their  employ- 
ment is  not  contrary  to  the  spirit  and  usage  of 
the  Semitic  languages  :  on  the  contrary,  the  affixes 
ed  and  an  are  altogether  foreign  to  the  genius  of 
these  tougues.     Not  less  so  is  the  prefixing  of  the 
suffixed  pronouns,  and  we  can  scarcely  help  seeing 
in  it  the  influence  not  only  of  the  allied  Coptic 
with  its  developed  system  of  prefixes,  such  as  nen 
for  the  plural,  mad  for  abstracts,  or  re/  for  agents, 
but  also  of  the  once  neighbouring   Kafir   tribes, 


GRAMMAR  AND  VOCABULARY  OF  A  LANGUAGE.   197 

which  always  prefix,  never  affix.  Here,  therefore, 
will  be  another  example  of  the  way  in  which  the 
grammar  of  a  people  may  be  affected  and  modified 
from  without.  We  fail  to  see,  however,  anything 
like  the  phenomenon  which  meets  us  in  the  JSTorth- 
Iodian  dialects,  where  the  case- endings  appear  to 
have  been  imported,  as  well  as  the  manner  in 
which  they  are  applied;  and  it  is  not  until  we 
come  to  the  postpositions  of  the  Hararite  that  we 
discover  any  analogy  to  this.  But  the  language 
of  Harar,  like  that  of  Assam,  is  as  yet  too  little 
known  to  permit  us  to  come  to  any  certain  deci- 
sion in  so  difficult  a  question.  It  is  noticeable, 
however,  that  in  both  cases  it  is  the  nominal  de- 
clension which  presents  the  grammatical  anomaly  ; 
and  when  we  consider  that  we  have  in  English 
such  words  as  fungi,  prospectus,  and  termini, 
while  German  can  form  from  Christus  both 
Ckristi  and  Christo,  we  may  perhaps  conclude 
that  the  noun  does  not  always  offer  that  sure 
criterion  of  the  character  and  position  of  a  lan- 
guage which  the  verbs  and  pronouns  do,  and 
that  in  certain  stages  of  linguistic  growth,  when 
a  speech  has  become  more  or  less  analytic,  it 
is  able  to  borrow  from  its  neighbours,  not  only 
the  form  of  the  declension,  but  even  the  words 
which  compose  this  form.  The  analytic  period 
means  the  resolution  of  the  sentence  and  its  gram- 


198  THE  POSSIBILITY  OF  MIXTURE  IN  THE 

matical  relations  into  separate  vocables,  and  these 
can  be  borrowed  freely  by  one  idiom  from  another. 
Intimately  connected  with  grammar  is  the  pho- 
nology of  a  language.  It  is  a  question  of  some 
interest  how  far  the  pronunciation  of  a  dialect 
may  be  affected  in  the  lapse  of  years  by  the  con- 
tiguity of  another.  That  such  an  influence  can 
be  exercised  is  certain.  A  familiar  example, 
which  will  occur  to  the  mind  of  every  one,  is  the 
adoption  of  the  Hottentot  clicks  by  the  Kafirs. 
This  is  a  very  remarkable  case,  as  the  sounds  are 
difficult,  and  the  superiority  of  the  borrowing  race 
is  very  marked.1  So,  too,  the  so-called  "  cerebral  " 
letters  in  Sanskrit,  which  are  not  found  in  any  of 
the  other  Aryan  dialects,  are  commonly  thought  to 
be  borrowed  from  the  Dravidian  ;  and  the  Norman 
Conquest  appears  to  have  had  much  to  do  with  the 
softening  of  the  gutturals  in  the  southern  part  of 
England,  the  Gallicised  invaders  finding  their  pro- 
nunciation  difficult,    and  accordingly  setting  the 

1  According  to  Bleek  ("Comp.  Gramm.  of  South  African  Lang.," 
i.  p.  13),  "the  occurrence  of  clicks  in  the  Kafir  dialects  decreases 
almost  in  proportion  to  their  distance  from  the  Hottentot  border." 
Only  the  easier,  and  not  the  harder  clicks  have  been  borrowed  by 
the  Kafirs,  and  whereas  the  Kafir  clicks  are  only  found  in  the  place 
of  other  consonants,  and  are  used  like  consonants  at  the  beginning 
of  syllables,  in  Hottentot,  k,  lh,  g,  h,  or  n  can  be  immediately  pre- 
ceded by  a  click,  and  form  with  it  the  initial  element  of  a  syllable. 
In  the  Bushman  language  even  labial  (and  probably  also  dental 
consonants  are  pronounced  with  clicks. 


GRAMMAR  AND  VOCABULARY  OF  A  LANGUAGE.   199 

example  of  breaking  them  down.  The  retention 
of  the  gutturals  in  Spain,  again,  may  be  ascribed 
to  the  long  settlement  of  the  Moors;  and  I  re- 
member a  Basque  girl,  to  whom  French  had 
become  the  language  of  everyday  life,  when 
giving  me  my  first  lesson  in  Euskuara  calling 
egoitz  ("  a  house")  egoi\  Of  the  same  nature  is 
the  change  of  i  to  g  in  Anglo-Saxon,  contrary  to 
the  usual  softening  of  consonants  to  vowels,  of 
which  Professor  March1  remarks,  that  "  the  move- 
ment (of  consonants  to  vowels)  is  sometimes 
reversed,  as  when  a  nation  moves  northward,  or 
northern  peoples  mix  with  a  vowel-speaking 
race."  It  must  be  remembered,  however,  that 
climate,  food,  and  custom  have  much  influence 
upon  phonology,  and  that  where  these  are  similar, 
we  may  expect  to  find  a  general  similarity  in  the 
pronunciation  of  two  languages.  We  are  all  well 
acquainted  with  the  hoarseness  and  roughness 
that  exposure  to  the  atmosphere  lends  to  the  voice; 
and  the  exercise  and  strength  that  a  mountainous 
country  gives  to  the  lungs  produce  a  correspond- 
ing effect  in  the  vigour  with  which  sounds  are 
emitted.2      Food,  of  course,   will  have  an  equal 

1  ■*  Comparative  Grammar  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  Language,"  p.  28. 

2  It  is  remarkable  that  just  as  a  Latin  k  answers  to  a  Greek  x 
(as  in  hortus  and  x°PT0S)>  the  modern  Italian  Greek  spoken  in  the 
eight  small  towns  in  the   neighbourhood  of   Otranto   and  Lecce 


200  THE  POSSIBILITY  OF  MIXTURE  IN  THE 

influence.  The  vocal  organs  are  under  the  com- 
mand of  the  muscles  and  the  nerves,  and  these 
depend  upon  the  health  and  robustness  of  the 
body.  A  mixed  race  will  inherit  the  phonetic 
capabilities  of  its  parents,  and  the  preponderance 
will  lie  upon  the  side  of  the  stronger  parent. 
Particular  fashions  are  not  without  their  influence  ; 
thus  the  loss  and  confusion  of  the  labials,  and  the 
excessive  nasalisation  in  the  languages  of  the 
savages  of  the  Pacific  coast  of  America,  must  be 
traced  to  the  rings  that  are  worn  through  the 
nostrils  and  the  lips  of  the  people.1  So  again  we 
find  from  Bleek  that  the  pronunciation  of  the  0 
Tyi-herero  in  South  Africa  is  lisping,  and  is  due  to 
the  custom  of  extracting  the  four  lower  teeth,  and 
partly  filing  away  the  upper  teeth.2  Imitation 
will  also  come  into  play :  we  acquire  our  pronun- 
ciation in  the  mimetic  days  of  childhood,  while 
the  vocal  organs  are  still  plastic;  and  here,  again, 
the  preference  will  be  given  to  the  pronunciation 
which,  for  any  reason,  is  the  best  fitted  for  success. 
Social  superiority  has  much  to  do  with  this  ;  we 
attempt,   in  school  and   out  of  school,  to  reflect 

changes  x  int°  h  (e-9->  homa  or  lamia  for  x&V-a)  according  to 
Morosi's  "  Studij  sui  dialetti  greci  della  terra  a'  Otranto  "  (1870). 

*Daa  "  On  the  Languages  of  the  Northern  Tribes  of  the  Old  and 
New  Continents,"  in  the  Trans,  of  the  Philological  Society,  1S56,  p. 
256. 

2  "  Sir  George  Grey's  Library,"  i.  167. 


GRAMMAR  AND  VOCABULARY  OF  A  LANGUAGE.   201 

the  pronunciation  of  the  higher  circles  of  society  ; 
and  just  as  the  court  dialect  of  Chaucer  became 
the   universal    model    in    England,    or    Parisian 
French  is  extirpating  the  Languedocian  patois,  so 
a  dissimilar  pronunciation  becomes   the  mark  of 
vulgarity  or  provincialism.      And   when    once  a 
particular  pronunciation  has  become  prevalent,  it 
reacts  upon  all  words  that  still  remain  exceptions: 
thus  in  English,  balcony,  retinue,  and  contemplate 
have,    after  a  long  struggle,    followed    the    rule 
which  throws  the  accent  back  as  far  as  possible. 
If  we  cross  to  America,  we  find  a  similar  pheno- 
menon taking  place  there.     It  is  seldom  that  we 
cannot  detect  a  born  and  bred  American  by  his 
pronunciation.      English  seems  in  the  mouths  of 
them  all  to  be  diverging  into  a  sharp  quick  nasali- 
sation,  which  can  hardly  have  originated  in  the 
twang  of  the  New  England  Puritan,  or  the  com- 
mixture of  European  races,  but  which  seems  due 
to  the  influences  of  a  dry,  extreme  climate,  like 
the  hatchet-face  of  the  aboriginal,  which  is  being 
reproduced    in   his    white     successor.      Perhaps, 
however,   one  of  the  best  countries  in  which  to 
study  this  question  of  phonological  borrowing  is 
Germany,  with  its  numerous  dialects  and  various 
phases  of  guttural-pronunciation.     Here  the  popu- 
lation has  come  into  contact  with  Slaves,  Finns, 
Magyars,  and  Latins  ;  and  Mr  Howorth  has  endea- 


202  THE  POSSIBILITY  OF  MIXTURE  IN  THE 

voured  to  trace  the  sibilants  of  South  Germany 
to  a  Slavonic  influence.1  However  this  may  be, 
imitation  lies  at  the  bottom  of  all  pronunciation  ; 
and  it  will  be  one  of  the  future  tasks  of  the  glot- 
tologist  to  determine  how  far  the  phonology  of 
a  language  has  been  modified  by  intercourse  with 
another,  and  how  far  the  similarity  of  each  is  only 
the  result  of  a  similarity  of  external  conditions. 
No  psychological  difficulty  interferes  here  :  we 
have  to  deal  only  with  the  outward  mechanism 
of  speech,  and  borrowed  sounds  are  as  natural 
and  as  possible  as  borrowed  words. 

The  latter  are  of  immense  importance  in  tracing 
the  growth  and  progress  of  the  human  mind. 
If  Glottology  is  the  science  which  ascertains  the 
laws  and  successive  history  of  that  development 
as  embodied  in  the  fossils  of  language,  not  the 
least  part  of  its  work  will  be  to  detect  the  debts 
owed    by   one   race  and   civilisation   to   another.2 


1  Mr  Murray,  in  his  valuable  work  on  "The  Dialect  of  the 
Southern  Counties  of  Scotland,''  points  out  that  the  confusion  of 
ai  and  a,  oi  and  o,  &c,  in  the  same  words,  the  change  of  ivh  into  f 
in  the  north-eastern  dialects,  and  the  dropping  of  the  initial  th  in 
that,  are  due  to  Keltic  influence. 

2  We  must  be  on  our  guard  against  drawing  too  wide  an  inference 
from  such  cases  of  borrowing.  They  prove  two  things,  and  two 
things  only, — the  social  contact  of  one  language  with  another,  and 
the  superior  civilisation  of  the  language  borrowed  from,  where  the 
loan-words  are  numerous  or  used  for  common  things.  But  they  do 
not  prove  a  negative  ;  they  do  not  imply  that  the  objects  denoted 


GRAMMAR  AND  VOCABULARY  OF  A  LANGUAGE.       203 

Nor  is  the  work  so  easy  as  it  seems  to  be  at  first 
sight.      We  must  find  out  general  laws  which  will 

by  the  loan-words  were  previously  unknown,  and  had  no  native 
names.  The  Basque  terms  for  "knife,"  for  instance,  ganibeta 
(Fr.  canif)  and  nabala  (Sp.  nabaja,  Lat.  novacula),  are  foreign 
importations  ;  yet  it  would  be  absurd  to  suppose  that  the  Basques 
were  ignorant  of  such  an  instrument  until  it  was  introduced  to 
them  by  their  more  cultivated  neighbours :  the  flint-makers  of 
Abbeville  would  have  been  in  a  more  highly  civilised  condition. 
But  in  fact,  Prince  Lucien  Bonaparte  has  found  the  original  and 
native  Basque  word  for  a  "knife"  in  a  single  obscure  village. 
This  is  haistoa,  from  a  root  which  means  "to  cut,"  and  is  the 
source  of  many  derivatives.  To  infer  a  negative  from  the  absence 
of  a  borne  term  for  any  object  in  a  language  is  parallel  to  the  mis- 
take sometimes  made  of  denyiug  the  knowledge  of  certain  things 
to  the  primitive  Aryans,  because  the  words  which  may  have  denoted 
them  have  left  no  traces  in  the  derived  dialects.  Just  as  the  mo- 
dern geologist  insists  on  the  imperfection  of  the  geological  record, 
so  ought  the  glottologist  to  remember  that  only  the  wrecks  and 
fragments  of  ancient  speech  have  been  preserved  to  us  by  happy 
accident.  Countless  words  and  forms  have  perished  altogether ; 
and  though  Pictet  can  show  that  an  object  designated  by  the  same 
name  in  both  Eastern  and  Western  Aryan  dialects  must  have  been 
known  to  our  remote  ancestors  of  the  prehistoric  period, — that  the 
birch,  for  example,  which  is  bhurja  in  Sanskrit,  and  birca  in  old 
German,  grew  on  the  slopes  of  their  primitive  settlement,  or  that 
they  fed  on  the  spelt,  which  is  called  yavas  in  Sanskrit  and  fet'a  in 
Greek, — yet  the  converse  of  this  does  not  hold  good.  The  ancient 
Aryan  may  have  been  acquainted  with  the  oyster,  for  all  that 
language  can  tell  us,  although  the  word  by  which  we  denote  it  is 
now  met  with  in  the  dialects  of  Europe  only,  and  does  not  occur 
in  those  of  Persia  and  Hindustan.  It  is  to  be  regretted  that  Fick 
in  his  epoch-making  book,  "  Die  ehemalige  Spracheinheit  der  Indo- 
germanen  Europas,"  has  not  been  on  his  guard  against  this  logical 
fallacy,  but  has  ventured  to  describe  the  progress  in  civilisation 
made  by  the  European  Aryans  after  their  separation  from  their 
Eastern  brethren  without  considering  that  the  want  of  a  common 
name  for  the  same  object  in  Eastern  and  Western  Aryan  may  be 


204  THE  POSSIBILITY  OF  MIXTURE  IN  THE 

allow  115  to  determine  whether  words  are  really 
borrowed,  or  merely  exhibit  that  accidental  resem- 
blance which  the  circumscribed  number  of  articu- 
late  sounds   sometimes   brings  about,    as   in    the 

explained  by  the  loss  of  the  word,  as  well  as  by  ignorance  of  the 
object  itself. 

Another  fallacy  committed  by  the  same  scholar  may  be  noticed 
here,  as  it  illustrates  one  of  the  difficulties  we  meet  with  in  deter- 
mining where  a  word  has  been  borrowed  or  not.  In  the  work 
above  cited  (p.  290),  he  says  that  though  the  Latin  cannabis  and 
the  old  Slavonic  lconop-l-ya  are  undoubtedly  borrowed  from  the 
Greek  /idvca^ts,  the  Teutonic  hanpa*,  hanf,  seems  to  show  that  the 
cultivation  of  hemp  was  known  to  the  European  Aryans  before 
their  separation,  since  it  has  undergone  the  action  of  Grimm's  law. 
But  this  assumes  that  the  action  of  this  law  ceased  at  a  definite 
period,  and  was  not  observed  at  the  time  when  the  Germans  were 
brought  into  contact  with  the  Romans.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  how- 
ever, we  are  altogether  unable  to  determine  the  epoch  at  which  the 
influence  of  analogy  ceased  to  be  felt  in  Teutonic,  and  when  loan- 
words were  no  longer  reduced  to  the  shape  which  the  analogy  of 
the  language,  and  the  instinctive  requirements  of  ear  and  voice 
demanded  for  them.  Indeed,  we  should  naturally  infer  that  this 
epoch  was  considerably  later  than  the  introduction  of  a  native 
literature,  and  the  inference  is  strengthened  by  what  we  observe 
in  other  languages.  Thus  in  Gaelic,  pascha  and  purpura  have  had 
to  become  caisg  and  corcur  in  accordance  with  the  general  phonetic 
law  which  substitutes  cfor  p  in  that  branch  of  Keltic,  and  these  words 
must  have  been  borrowed  subsequently  to  the  establishment  of 
Christianity  in  Britain.  It  will  be  shown  in  chap.  ix.  that  the  action 
of  analogy  upon  phonology  is  still  powerful  even  in  the  most  civil- 
ised and  stereotyped  languages,  and  it  is  not  an  unheard-of  thing 
for  a  foreign  word  to  be  "  Anglicised  "  even  in  this  age  of  railways 
and  travelling.  It  is  plain,  however,  that  if  once  we  admit  the 
possibility  of  a  naturalisation  of  loan-words,  and  the  subjection  of 
them  to  the  action  of  the  regular  "  lautverschiebung,"  we  lose  one 
of  our  criteria  for  an  off-hand  decision  as  to  whether  a  word  is 
native  or  nut. 


GRAMMAR  AND  VOCABULARY  OF  A  LANGUAGE.       205 

North.  American  potomac,  (C  river,"  and  the  Greek 
7roTafio<; ;  or  whether,  again,  they  are  both  taken 
from  a  common  source,  or  one  of  them  from  the 
other.  Then  we  must  have  rules  for  knowing- 
whether  a  word  is  of  foreign  origin  or  really  of 
native  growth :  and  above  all,  when  we  have 
actually  ascertained  that  two  words  stand  in  the 
relation  of  lent  and  borrowed,  we  must  find  out 
on  which  side  the  debt  lies.  In  the  case  of  the 
Semitic  keren  and  the  Greek  tcepas,  Latin  cornu, 
for  instance,  we  may  ask,  are  these  words  of  inde- 
pendent origin,  or  are  they  loan-words  ;  and  if  the 
latter,  by  whom  were  they  lent?  Or  again,  is  the 
Greek  xpvads  derived  from  the  Semitic  khdruts, 
61  gold  ?  "  If  we  could  learn  that  these  were  really 
loan-words,  much  light  would  be  thrown  on  the 
history  of  early  civilisation,  and  the  relation  of 
Semites  and  Aryans  under  this  aspect.  Now,  the 
comparative  laws  of  language  inform  us  that 
while,  on  the  one  hand,  the  final  nasal  of  the 
Semitic  keren  is  a  part  of  the  root,  the  final  -nu  of 
the  Latin  is  a  mere  formative,  and  that  the  same 
word  appears  in  the  Sanskirt  iringam^  "horn,"  from 
siraSy  "head,"  whence  we  have  the  Greek  /cdpa,  the 
Latin  cervus,  and  our  own  hart.  The  East  Aryans 
of  India  had  no  such  close  intercourse  with  the 
Semites  as  would  have  given  the  latter  so  common 
and  non-technical  a  word  as  keren,  while  among  the 


206  THE  POSSIBILITY  OF  MIXTURE  IN  THE 

West  Aryans  the  nasal  is  found  only  in  Latin, 
from  which,  it  could  not  have  been  borrowed  by 
Assyrians  and  Hebrews.  Similarly,  the  reference 
of  ypvaos  to  the  Sanskrit  kiranyam  (Zend,  zar- 
anya,  Slav,  zlato,  Phryg.  yXovpos),  and  its  pho- 
nological connection  with  the  root  which  signifies 
"  of  a  pale  greenish-yellow  colour," — whence  we 
get  the  Sanskrit  karis,  the  Greek  x\otj  and  %o\?J, 
the  Latin  viridis,  bills,  luteus,  and  the  English 
green,  gall  and  gold, — sufficiently  disposes  of  any 
borrowing  from  kkdruts,  which,  on  its  side,  comes 
from  a  Semitic  root  meaning  "  to  grave  "  or 
"  dig."  Let  us  select  another  example  from 
Basque.  A  large  proportion  of  the  dictionary  of 
the  latter  language  has  been  taken  from  Spanish 
or  Latin,  and  to  this  M.  Blade  would  add  the 
Basque  numerals  bi,  "  two,"  and  sei,  "  six."  But 
the  laws  of  phonology  forbid  this.  The  labial 
which  we  see  in  bird  is  nothing  more  than  the  v 
of  duo  which  has  lost  its  dental,  as  in  viginti ;  and 
out  of  the  distributive  the  Basques  could  never 
have  got  a  cardinal.  The  only  Latin  form  of  the 
numeral  with  which  the  Biscayans  could  have  come 
into  contact  was  duo  through  the  Spanish  dos,  as 
is  again  shown  by  glottological  laws.  And  in 
fact,  there  is  no  need  of  connecting  bi  with  any 
Latin  word  at  all.  The  comparative  study  of  the 
Basque  numerals  has  relegated  them  to  the  Finnic 


GRAMMAR  AND  VOCABULARY  OF  A  LANGUAGE.   207 

family,  and  here  both  bi  and  sei  are  possible  forms 
for  "two"  and  "  six."1  Thus  the  laws  which 
have  been  obtained  from  the  comparison  of  pho- 
netic sounds  in  different  groups  of  speech,  by 
enabling  us  to  reach  back  to  the  earliest  forms  of 
a  word  in  each  group,  or  to  dialects,  which  are 
removed  from  the  line  of  contact,  allow  us  to  de- 
termine whether  or  not  we  are  dealing  with  loan- 
words. In  the  same  way,  other  laws  may  come 
into  play  when  we  are  doubtful  about  the  priority 
of  borrowing  in  any  case.  Thus  in  Accadian,  hiri 
meant  "  a  city,"  which  at  once  reminds  us  of  the 
Semitic  y$  (Assyrian,  ^uru)  ;  and  we  ask,  Sup- 
posing they  are  loan-words,  on  which  side  did  the 
debt  lie  ?  Now,  I  believe  I  have  shown 2  that  a 
large  number  of  Semitic  words  which  denote  the 
first  elements  of  a  higher  civilisation  are  derived 
from  Accadian,  and  this  at  once  raises  the  pre- 
sumption that  Tjj  is  borrowed,  and  borrowed  from 
the  Turanian  neighbours  of  the  Semitic  nomads. 
When  we  find,  however,  that  not  only  other  words 
which    signify    settled    habitations,     like    Meal 

1  In  Accadian,  hi  is  "  two,"  as  well  as  the  ordinary  hats  (Esthon- 
ian,  kats)  ;  and  sei  seems  a  modification  of  the  old  numeral  of 
"three,"  like  the  Japanese  mitsu,  "three,"  and  mutsu,  "six."     It     .-      '^v  O 

would  then  show  itself  in  the  Esthonian  sei-tze,  "seven"  (3-10),        ^ 
as  well  as  the  Accadian  sussic,  "  sixty."  jy  a' 

Origin  of  Semitic  Civilisation,"  in  Trans.  Soc.  Biblic.  Archaol,,     • 
872.  ^  'S? 


V    -*' 

<   ■ 


208  THE  POSSIBILITY  OF  MIXTURE  IN  THE 

(Accadian,  e-gal,  "great  house  ")  or  the  Assyrian 
muccu,  "  building,"  are  derived  from  Babylonia, 
but  also  that  'uri  in  Accadian  enters  into  the 
composition  of  other  native  words,  like  murub, 
"  city,"  initial  mu  being  interchanged  with  single 
u,  and  b  being  a  formative  affix,  we  are  induced 
to  conclude  that  it  was  from  the  old  Turanian 
civilisation  in  Babylonia,  which  the  last  few  years 
have  revealed  to  us,  that  the  early  Semite  obtained 
his  first  lessons  in  culture.  It  is  a  contribution 
of  the  highest  importance  to  the  mental  history  of 
mankind.  From  the  beginning  the  Semite  seems 
to  have  stood  between  the  old  and  the  new,  between 
Asia  and  Europe — the  trader  not  in  material  wares 
only,  but  in  the  far  more  precious  merchandise  of 
thought  and  invention.  I  cannot  do  better  than 
conclude  this  chapter  with  two  striking  instances 
of  this. 

The  Greeks  derived  their  weights  and  measures, 
as  well  as  their  alphabet,  from  the  Semitic  East. 
The  standard  of  these  was  the  po,  which  was 
handed  on  to  the  Romans,  and  so  to  the  Western 
world  under  the  name  of  the  mina.  The  fiva  is 
the  Hebrew  munch,  and  the  final  a  proves  that  it 
was  immediately  borrowed,  like  the  letters  of  the 
alphabet,  not  from  the  Phoenicians  of  Tyre  and 
Sidon,  but  from  the  Aramaic  population  further  to 
the  north.      Bockk  has  shown  that  Pheidon,  the 


GRAMMAR  AND  VOCABULARY  OF  A  LANGUAGE.      209 

great  king  of  Argos,  arranged  his  scale  of  weights 
upon  a  Babylonian  model;  and  clay  contract- 
tablets  in  the  British  Museum,  written  in  Assyrian 
cuneiform  with  Aramaic  dockets,  indicate  that 
from  the  reign' of  Tiglath-Pileser  (b.c.  745)  down- 
wards Aramaic  was  the  language  of  commerce 
throughout  the  Assyrian  world.  And  not  only 
so,  but  the  mana  was  the  standard  weight  by 
which  gold  and  silver  were  weighed,  and  all  trade 
transactions  carried  out.  There  was  the  mana,  or 
"  maund,"  of  Carchemish,  whose  position  near  the 
fords  of  the  Euphrates,  on  the  high  road  to  the 
Mediterranean,  had  made  it  take  the  commercial 
place  of  Tyre  after  the  destruction  of  the  latter 
city  by  the  Assyrians,  as  well  as  the  mana  of 
"  the  country  "  (of  Assyria),  or  "  of  the  king." 
Thus  we  find  Nergal-sarra-nacir  (b.c.  667)  lend- 
ing "  four  manehs  of  silver  according  to  the  maneh 
of  Carchemish,"  at  five  shekels  of  silver  interest 
per  month;  and  in  the  Eponymy  of  Zazai  (b.c. 
692),  a  house  in  Nineveh,  "  with  its  shrubbery 
and  gates,"  was  sold  for  one  maneh  of  silver 
according  to  the  "royal  standard." 

Now  the  mana  might  seem  at  first  sight  of  Semi- 
tic origin.  We  have  the  Semitic  root  HJD,  "  to 
number,"  from  which  comes  the  Hebrew  mandk, 
"  a  portion,"  and  with  which  the  Aramaic  mene, 
that  Daniel    read   on    the  walls  of  Belshazzar's 

o 


210  THE  POSSIBILITY  OF  MIXTURE  IN  THE 

palace,  is  connected,  and  it  would  seem  to  yield  a 
£Ood  enough  meaning:  for  the  mana.  But  this  is 
put  out  of  the  question  by  the  fact  that  mana  in 
Assyrian  is  indeclinable  when  strictly  used,  not 
even  admitting  of  a  plural,  whereas,  were  it  a 
Semitic  word,  the  nominative  and  ordinary  form 
would  be  manu.  It  must,  therefore,  be  a  loan- 
word, and  the  similarity  of  the  Aryan  root  ma, 
"  to  measure,"  which  has  given  us  "  moon  "  and 
"  month,"  might  incline  us  to  seek  its  origin  here. 
The  Greek  fiva,  however,  comes  from  the  Semitic ; 
and  the  Semites  could  not  have  taken  a  foreign 
root,  as  distinguished  from  a  derivative,  and 
formed  a  technical  word  out  of  it ;  consequently 
we  must  look  elsewhere  for  the  home  of  the  mana. 
This  has  generally  been  supposed  to  be  Egypt,  as 
the  mn  is  found  there  also  at  an  early  date ;  not, 
however,  before  the  times  when  the  Egyptians 
borrowed  freely  from  Palestine,  not  only  words 
like  sus,  "  horse,"  and  sar,  "  prince,"  but  even 
marcahtitha,  "chariot,"  and  sepet,  "  lip."  But 
a  new  light  has  of  late  been  unexpectedly  thrown 
upon  the  matter.  An  old  table  of  Accadian  laws, 
which  has  an  Assyrian  translation  attached,  orders 
the  man  who  divorces  his  wife  to  pay  "  half  a 
maneh  of  silver ;  "  a  mild  penalty,  by  the  way, 
compared  with  that  of  the  wife,  who  was  con- 
demned to  be  thrown  into  the  river  for  repudiating 


GRAMMAR  AND  VOCABULARY  OF  A  LANGUAGE.       211 

her  husband.  Now  the  word  mana  is  found  in 
the  Accadian  column,  and  the  vowel  harmony 
thoroughly  suits  the  structure  of  the  language. 
Here,  then,  we  seem  to  have  lighted  upon  the 
parentage  of  the  word,  which,  after  all,  would 
have  come  from  Babylonia  in  a  truer  sense  than 
the  Greek  antiquary  had  any  idea  of,  along  with 
many  other  Semitic  names  of  weights  and  measures, 
not  excluding  even  some  of  the  numerals.  It  is 
interesting  thus  to  trace  the  beginning  and  growth 
of  that  idea  of  measure  which  lies  at  the  bottom  of 
science  as  well  as  of  trade  ;  to  learn  that  Baby- 
lonia was  its  cradle,  and  a  Turanian  race  its  first 
discoverers  ;  that  the  Semites  have  been  imitators 
and  mediators  in  the  great  work  of  civilisation, 
and  that  the  Western  nations  have  through  them 
inherited  the  seeds  of  the  culture  which  they 
alone  have  known  how  to  bring  to  its  fullest  per- 
fection. 

The  second  instance  to  which  I  referred  points 
in  the  same  direction.  In  Semitic,  the  root  tf?H 
means  "  to  change  "  or  "  exchange,"  and  the  de- 
rivative kkdlepk,  "  exchange"  or  "agio."  From 
this  the  Greeks  got  their  tcoWvftos,  which,  like 
dppa/3cov  (Lat.  arrhabo  and  arrka,  from  the  Heb. 
9Srdbdn),  bears  witness  to  the  ancient  commer- 
cial activity  of  the  Semite,  from  whom  the  Greek 
derived  both  his  idea  and  his  name  of  the  rela- 


212  THE  POSSIBILITY  OF  MIXTURE  IN  THE 

tions  of  trade.  It  was  trade,  however,  of  a 
particular  sort ;  and  the  very  fact  that  the  words 
denoting  money-dealing  are  of  foreign  origin,  is 
sufficient  to  show,  without  the  testimony  of  Aris- 
totle, that  the  whole  business  was  originally 
distasteful  to  the  Greek  mind.  It  was  the  same 
at  Rome.  Money-lenders  were  never  in  good  re- 
pute there ;  and  Cicero's  colbjbus  is  again  bor- 
rowed from  the  borrowed  Greek  KoXkvjSos.  Here 
again,  therefore,  the  Semitic  race  appears  as  the 
pioneer  of  commerce  in  the  West,  the  mediator 
between  Europe  and  Asia.  But  this  is  not  all  the 
history  connected  with  the  root  *)bn.  From  it 
the  Khalifs  of  Mohammedanism  obtained  their 
name.  They  were  "  the  deputies  "  and  "  succes- 
sors "  of  the  Prophet, — those  who,  in  a  regular 
order  of  change,  have  been  the  Commanders  of  the 
Faithful  in  their  struggle  against  the  infidels  of 
this  world.  Amid  the  uncertainties  of  succession, 
however,  the  divided  Khalifate  of  Bagdad  and  Spain, 
and  the  vicissitudes  of  fortune,  the  name  of  Khalif 
gradually  ceased  to  have  that  definite  meaning 
which  it  originally  bore.  But  it  was  reserved  for 
the  European  and  the  unbeliever  to  borrow  and 
misuse  it  as  the  proper  title  of  any  Mohammedan 
sovereign,  and  then  to  extend  it  to  any  ruler  what- 
soever, whether  Turk  or  Christian,  Eastern  or 
Western.     Far  indeed   has    it   departed  from  its 


GRAMMAR  AND  VOCABULARY  OF  A  LANGUAGE.   213 


original  meaning  when  we  find  one  of  the  few 
compositions  left  ns  by  the  disappointed  life  of 
Prince  Charles  Edward  turning  the  Hanoverian 
king  of  England  into  a  successor  of  the  Arabian 
Mohammed — 


"I  hate  all  kings,  and  the  thrones  they  sit  on, 
From  the  King  of  France  to  the  Caliph  of  Britain. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE     DOCTRINE     OP     ROOTS. 

All  the  sciences  that  bear  upon  the  origin  and 
early  history  of  man  are  beginning  to  point  out 
more  and  more  clearly  that  he  is  a  ffiov  ttoXltlkov 
in  a  much  wider  sense  than  Aristotle  ever  ima- 
gined. Instead  of  starting  with  atomistic  indi- 
viduals, we  must  start  with  the  converse,  the 
community.  The  individual  is  the  last  growth 
and  result  of  time ;  and  society,  as  composed  of 
individuals,  has  arisen  out  of  a  sort  of  beehive 
existence,  by  a  process  of  differentiation  which 
holds  good,  as  Mr  Herbert  Spencer  has  shown, 
throughout  the  organic  world.  The  primitive 
savage  was  but  a  part  of  a  tribe,  with  no  ideas 
beyond  those  which  the  tribe  possessed  in  common. 
Even  the  wives  and  children  were  common  pro- 
perty, thus  realising  Plato's  Republic  in  a  practical 
manner ;  and  special  property  in  a  wife  appears 
to  have  originated  in  the  acquisition  of  the  women 
of  another  tribe  in  war.     The  captive  was  at  the 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS.  215 

mercy  of  her  captor ;  he  might  kill  her  or  make 
her  his  slave — in  other  words,  his  peculiar  wife 
— just  as  he  chose.  It  was  the  same  with  other 
property ;  the  commune  preceded  individual  pos- 
session everywhere,  thus  bringing  the  gregarious 
period  of  human  history  down  to  a  late  epoch  of 
development.  All  this  throws  much  light  upon 
the  earlier  stage  of  language.  Judging  from 
analogy,  we  should  conclude  that  language  also, 
the  artificial  link  between  the  several  units  of  a 
tribe  or  community,  would  have  a  communistic 
origin.  We  must  go  back  to  the  beehive  era  in 
order  to  discover  its  beginnings.  In  other  words, 
language  ought  first  to  have  been  common  property, 
full  of  vague,  instinctively  felt  signification,  but 
not  yet  differentiated  into  individual  words  with 
special  sounds  and  meanings.  In  fact,  we  ought 
to  start  not  with  the  word,  but  with  a  wider 
indefinite  whole,  out  of  which  the  word,  or  rather 
the  sentence,  has  been  elaborated  ;  and  that  whole 
would  have  conveyed  the  same  general  indetermi- 
nate sense  to  the  several  units  of  the  community, 
whose  wants  and  means  of  expressing  them  were 
the  same. 

Now  we  have  already  found  that  this  is  actually 
the  case.  If  we  wish  to  get  at  the  primary  facts 
of  Glottology,  we  have  to  begin  with  the  sentence, 
and  not  with  the  isolated  word.      It  can  never  be 


216         THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS. 

too  often  repeated,  that  words  have  grown  out  of 
the  sentence,  though  each  race  has  carried  out 
this  process  differently,  in  accordance  with  its 
primitive  tendency.  Everywhere,  however,  the 
general  character  of  the  process  has  been  identical. 
Everywhere  sounds,  forms,  and  meanings  have 
been  differentiated ;  the  indistinct  sound,  for 
instance,  that  stood  for  r  and  I  in  the  parent 
Aryan  branched  off  into  those  two  consonants,  just 
as  the  obscure  sound  which  serves  for  c  and  t  in 
the  Sandwich  Islands  may  yet  be  resolved  into 
these  letters,  and  the  vowel  changes  of  the  verb, 
which  have  no  meaning  in  Sanskrit,  have  become 
the  Teutonic  ablaut ^  serving  to  distinguish  the  re- 
lations of  time.  The  compound  word  is  pre-emin- 
ently an  example  of  this  differentiation  :  two  words 
must  be  so  clearly  marked  off  and  defined  already 
as  to  be  able  to  be  connected  together  to  form  a 
third  with  determinate  form  and  signification.  It 
is  merely  a  matter  of  further  progress  in  the 
differentiating  direction  when  the  idea  contained 
in  the  compound  has  become  so  far  fixed  and 
definite  as  to  lose  all  reference  to  its  original 
factors,  so  that  one  or  both  of  these  are  deprived 
of  all  independent  force,  and  convey  no  meaning 
except  when  united  together.  Hence  the  existence 
of  compounds  in  a  language  may  be  considered  a 
mark  of  lateness  ;  before  it  has  acquired  them  the 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS.  217 

language  will  have  advanced  far  beyond  its  period 
of  childhood  ;  the  vagueness  of  infancy,  when 
subject  and  object  are  blended  in  inextricable  con- 
fusion, will  have  passed  away,  and  the  judgments 
that  lay  implicit  in  those  first  semi-conscious 
expressions  which  I  have  called  sentences  will 
have  been  made  explicit  and  precise  by  being 
summed  up  in  an  ever-increasing  number  of  what 
I  have  called  words.  The  number  of  words,  in 
fact,  with  distinct  and  separate  meanings,  measures 
the  progress  of  a  language  and  the  culture  of  those 
who  speak  it.  Now  it  is  evident  that  if  language 
continually  tends  to  enrich  itself  more  and  more 
with  different  words  and  sounds,  in  order  to  get 
at  its  beginnings  we  must  reverse  the  process  of 
differentiation,  and  discover  those  rude  chaotic 
combinations  of  sound  and  sense  out  of  which  the 
manifold  wealth  of  articulate  speech  has  sprung. 
TVre  must  go  to  work  in  the  same  way  as  *the 
chemist,  who  obtains  his  elemental  substances  by 
analysing  the  different  products  of  nature.  In- 
finitely various  as  these  are,  they  have  all  been 
obtained  from  about  sixty  simple  elements,  which, 
by  combining  with  one  another  in  different  pro- 
portions, have  thus  differentiated  the  manifold 
properties  which  each  separate  combination  pos- 
sesses. So  in  Glottology,  we  must  throw  our 
words  into  the  retort  of  the  comparative  method, 


218  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS. 

break  up  the  compounds,  analyse  the  grammar, 
simplify  the  signification,  and  trace  the  growth  of 
phonetic  distinctions.  It  is  in  this  manner  that 
we  shall  arrive  at  our  simple  elements,  beyond 
which  it  is  impossible  for  Glottology — at  all  events 
without  the  aid  of  other  sciences — to  proceed,  just 
as  it  is  impossible  for  chemistry  pure  and  simple 
to  advance  beyond  its  primary  substances. 

The  roots  of  language,  then,  must  be  reached  by 
comparison.  The  truth  is  of  old  standing,  though 
the  scientific  use  of  it  is  of  such  recent  date.  The 
grammarians  of  India,  long  before  the  Christian 
era,  had  reduced  the  Sanskrit  lexicon  to  a  certain 
number  of  primitive  roots,  by  referring  to  one 
monosyllable  all  those  words  the  non-formative 
part  of  which  agreed  in  sound  ;  and  the  Jewish 
doctors  of  the  tenth  century  had  resolved  the 
lan^ua^e  of  the  Old  Testament  into  triliteral 
radicals  through  a  comparison  of  Hebrew  with 
Arabic.  Every  one  could  see  that  this  or  that 
series  of  words  presupposed  the  same  combination 
of  letters  ;  it  was  the  root  out  of  which  the  whole 
series  seemed  to  have  grown,  like  the  tree  out  of 
the  ground.  But  the  discovery  remained  barren. 
The  Greeks  contented  themselves  with  discussing 
whether  language  had  originated  by  convention 
or  by  nature,  and  Christian  writers  took  it  for 
granted  that  the  Semitic  radicals  formed  the  Ian- 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS.  219 

guage  of  Paradise.  It  is  only  since  the  rise  of 
Glottology  that  it  has  been  asked  what  these  roots 
are,  and  what  is  their  relation  to  the  words  de- 
rived from  them  ?  Now  here  it  is  necessary  to  bear 
in  mind  two  things,  which  have  been  too  often 
overlooked  in  the  discussion  of  this  subject.  One 
is,  that  Glottology  cannot  go  beyond  its  facts  ; 
and  as  these  are  sentence-words  and  the  ultimate 
analysis  of  such  sentence-words,  it  cannot  go 
beyond  the  Root-period  and  speculate  as  to  what 
roots  themselves  grew  out  of.  The  bow-wow 
theory,  or  the  pooh-pooh  theory,  or  the  ding-dong 
theory,  all  lie  equally  outside  the  proper  province 
of  Glottology.  If  we  want  to  decide  upon  this 
matter,  we  must  call  in  the  aid  of  other  sciences. 
The  other  thing  to  be  remembered  is  the  loose  use 
of  the  phrase  u  roots  of  language."  There  was  no 
one  primeval  language,  as  I  have  endeavoured  to 
show,  at  least  so  far  as  our  data  allow  us  to 
believe ;  on  the  contrary,  languages  were  infi- 
nitely numerous,  as  numerous  as  the  communities 
which  spoke  them ;  and  it  by  no  means  follows 
that  the  roots  of  all  these  languages  were  of  a 
similar  kind,  or  that  words  have  been  derived 
from  them  in  a  similar  way.  Indeed,  I  have  tried 
to  show  that,  so  far  is  this  from  being  true,  that 
the  chief  modern  races  of  the  world  have  each 
followed  a  separate  and  independent  direction  in 


220  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS. 

reflecting  their  thoughts  in  speech.  Consequently 
to  talk  of  finding  the  roots  of  language  or  of 
investigating  the  origin  of  language  is  highly  mis- 
leading. What  we  have  to  deal  with  are  the  roots 
of  languages.  The  results  obtained  from  the  study 
of  the  Aryan  group  are  not  to  be  applied  uni- 
versally, and  be  made  the  rule  for  Semitic  and 
Turanian  also.  What  we  can  do,  however,  is  to 
investigate  the  roots  of  the  various  families  of 
speech  so  far  as  is  possible,  and  then  to  compare 
the  conclusions  drawn  from  each.  Among  the 
many  one-sided  theories  produced  by  an  exclusive 
regard  to  the  Aryan  family,  none  is  so  common 
as  that  which  ascribes  to  roots  a  general  abstract 
meaning,  as  if  our  ancestors  of  the  Root-period 
employed  nothing  except  abstract  terms  in  con- 
versing with  one  another.  We  have  only  to  state 
the  proposition,  however,  to  see  how  absurd  it  is. 
How  could  savages,  whose  vocabulary  consisted 
entirely  of  such  words  as  "  bringing,"  "  shining," 
"  defending,"  be  mutually  intelligible  ?  There  is 
no  common  bond  of  intelligibility  between  such 
universal  ideas  ;  language  must  begin  with  the 
objects  of  sense,  if  we  are  to  communicate  our 
meaning  to  others,  and  rise  from  these  by  the  help 
of  metaphor  to  abstract  supersensuous  conceptions. 
Moreover,  these  abstract  ideas  must  either  be  the 
last  result  of  reflection,  the  universals  arrived  at 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS.  221 

after  a  long  course  of  education,  or  else  must  be 
of  the  vaguest  and  most  unmeaning  character. 
In  the  first  case,  we  are  ascribing  to  the  primitive 
barbarian  the  mind  of  the  civilised  man  ;  in  the 
second  case,  any  language  at  all  would  be  out  of 
the  question.  Two  persons  could  not  talk  together 
in  vague  generalities,  more  especially  when  their 
conversation  would  be  mostly  confined  to  the  bare 
necessities  of  life.  Even  with  us,  the  same 
general  term  bears  very  different  meanings  to  two 
different  persons.  It  is  what  Locke  called  a 
"  mixed  mode  ;  "  and  with  all  our  culture  and 
scientific  definition,  it  is  impossible  to  make  such 
epithets  as  "good"  or  "noble"  convey  exactly 
the  same  signification  and  the  same  associations 
to  two  minds.  In  fact,  the  notion  is  absolutely 
contradicted  by  what  we  observe  among  modern 
savages.  Here  the  individual  objects  of  sense  have 
names  enough,  while  general  terms  are  very  rare. 
Thus  the  Mohicans  have  words  for  cutting  various 
objects,  but  none  to  signify  cutting  simply ;  and 
the  Society  Islanders  can  talk  of  a  dog's  tail,  a 
sheep's  tail,  or  a  man's  tail,  but  not  of  tail  itself. 
"  The  dialect  of  the  Zulus  is  rich  in  nouns  denoting- 
different  objects  of  the  same  genus,  according  to 
some  variety  of  colour,  redundancy  or  deficiency 
of  members,  or  some  other  peculiarity,"  such  as 


222  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS. 

66  red  cow,"  "  white  cow,"  "  brown  cow;"1  and  the 
Sechuana  has  no  less  than  ten  words  to  express 
homed  cattle.2  The  Tasmanians  were  so  utterly 
deficient  in  the  power  of  forming  abstract  ideas, 
that  they  were  obliged  to  say  u  like  the  moon," 
or  some  other  round  object,  when  they  wanted  to 
express  the  conception  of  roundness.  The  theory 
in  question  has  originated  in  a  too  exclusive 
attention  to  the  phenomena  of  the  Aryan 
lexicon.  Here  all  the  roots  seem  to  bear  a 
general  meaning  only,  out  of  which  the  names 
of  individual  things  have  been  obtained  by  means 
of  suffixes.  Thus  daughter  (chihita)  is  merely 
"  the  milker,"  from  the  root  which  has  the 
general  signification  of  "  milking ;  "  father  (jiater, 
pita)  is  "  the  defender,"  from  pel  ;  brother 
(bkrdtd)  is  "  the  bearer,"  from  bhar.  In  the 
same  way,  a  large  proportion  of  the  words  we  use 
turn  out,  when  analysed,  to  be  simply  general 
epithets  which  have  come  to  be  set  apart  to  de- 
note some  special  object.  Hence  the  conclusion 
to  which  the  Sanskritists  jumped,  that  the  general 
precedes  the  particular,  and  their  triumphant  re- 
futation of  the  onomatopoeic  hypothesis  of  the 
origin  of  language.  But  they  have  forgotten  that 
their  induction  has  been  made  from  a  single  in- 

1  Jour.  ofAmcr.  Orient.  Soc,  voL  i.,  No.  4,  p.  402. 
-  C'asalis  Gram.,  p.  7. 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS.  223 

stance  only,  and  that  instance  altogether  excep- 
tional in  the  history  of  speech.  The  parent- 
Aryan,  if  it  ever  existed,  was  the  language  of 
comparatively  civilised  men.  Such  examples  as 
duhitd  would  of  themselves  show  this,  and  point 
to  a  pastoral  life ;  and  the  persistency  with  which 
the  several  members  of  the  original  stock  have 
remained  true  to  the  primitive  language  can  only 
be  explained  by  supposing  our  ancestors  to  have 
advanced  considerably  beyond  the  degree  of  civil- 
isation at  present  possessed  by  the  Ostiak  or  Bur- 
mese tribes.  The  Aryan  scholar,  therefore,  is 
dealing  with  a  language  in  which  we  may  well 
expect  to  find  general  epithetic  terms  ;  but  he 
cannot  conclude  from  this  that  there  were  no 
individual  words  originally  which  denoted  some 
particular  object.1  Beyond  the  parent- Aryan  lies  a 
vast  unknown  period,  upon  which  Glottology  casts 
but  little  light ;  and  the  fact  that  in  so  many 
unallied  languages  the  names  o£  father  and  mother 
are  formed  by  means  of  the  labials,  would  seem  to 
imply  that  pitar  and  mdtar  were  chosen  not  with- 
out a  purpose  ;  and    although   the   lexicographer 

1  Buschmann,  after  an  exhaustive  comparison  of  words  used  by 
different  peoples  for  "father"  and  "mother,"  in  bis  paper  "On 
Natural  Sounds,"  says,  "  I  am  glad  that  the  process  which  I  have 
developed  presents  a  simple  proof  of  the  independent  formation 
of  substantives  ;  for  a  certain  systematising  philology  has  of  late 
years,  with  absolute  exclusiveness,  set  up  the  theory  that  the  roots 
of  all  language  must  have  been  verbs." 


224  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS. 

must  derive  these  words  themselves  from  pa  and 
mdy  "  fashioning,"  x  they  yet  point  to  a  time  when 
the  names  given  to  the  parents  were  merely  the 
first  cries  of  infancy.  "  Father  "  and  "  mother  " 
must  have  had  names  before  the  root  tar  was 
compounded  with  the  roots  pa  and  ma  to  denote 
them.2  But  the  error  of  the  Sanskritists  goes  deeper 
than  this.  They  raise  into  a  sort  of  pigeon-Eng- 
lish lano'uasfe  the  residuum  of  sounds  which  lies 
at  the  bottom  of  the  dictionary.  Because  a  cer- 
tain number  of  vocables  presuppose  a  common 
monosyllable  with  a  common  vague  meaning,  it 
does  not  at  all  follow  that  this  monosyllable  ever 
formed  part  of  an  actual  language.  For  anything 
we  know,  it  may  be  merely  an  archetype  of 
phonetic  sound,  presupposed  by  the  derivatives, 
but  never  consciously  expressed  in  speech.  Still 
less  can  we  assert  that  the  vague  general  signifi- 
cation given  to  the  root  was  originally  expressed 

1  Mdtd  ill  the  Rig- Veda  is  masculine,  just  as  in  Georgian  and  the 
(Athapascan)  Tlatskanai,  mama  is  "father."  We  can  hardly 
identify  this  root  md  with  via,  "to  measure  :"  it  has  produced 
the  Greek  /xaia,  and  probably  the  Latin  manus,  manes. 

2  There  is  a  truth,  however,  which  lies  at  the  bottom  of  this 
strangely- expressed  theory  of  the  abstract  character  of  roots. 
Objects  must  have  been  named  from  their  qualities.  It  was  by 
these  alone  that  they  could  be  known  ;  and  though  the  qualities 
were  necessarily  external  and  superficial,  such  as  the  bleating  of 
the  sheep  or  the  bellowing  of  the  bull,  they  must  still  have  arisen 
out  of  the  impressions  made  by  outward  phenomena  upon  the  senses 
and  the  mind. 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS.  225 

by  it.  The  root  may  Lave  originally  denoted  an 
individual  object  or  action,  which  was  afterwards 
lost  when  the  progress  of  composition  and  phone- 
tic decay  had  supplied  the  vocabulary  with  other 
terms.  There  is,  however,  a  truth  in  the  prevail- 
ing theory,  though  thus  faultily  expressed.  The 
sentence  comes  before  the  word,  the  indefinite 
before  the  definite ;  and  the  root-period,  as  we 
have  seen,  is  characterised  by  the  want  of  differen- 
tiation. The  Aryan  root,  consequently,  while 
primarily  denoting  an  individual  object,  would 
have  done  so  in  a  very  different  way  from  that  in 
which  we  should  denote  the  same.  The  individual 
can  only  be  properly  understood  in  relation  to 
the  general ;  when,  therefore,  the  idea  of  the 
general  has  not  yet  been  arrived  at,  the  idea  of 
the  particular  is  at  once  vague  and  sensuous. 
The  word  which  denotes  it  is  merely  a  mark, 
nothing  more ;  just  as  much  as  a  proper  name, 
and  with  no  more  subjective  reference  than  the 
proper  name  has.  So  long  as  the  object  can  be 
pointed  out  sensibly,  the  meaning  and  reference 
of  the  word  is  unmistakable.  We  know  exactly, 
for  instance,  who  a  particular  John  or  Henry  are 
when  they  are  indicated  by  the  finger ;  but  when 
the  object  is  not  present,  the  signification  and 
content  of  the  word  is  wholly  vague  and  uncer- 
tain.    The  judgment  which  is  summed  up  in  it  is 

p 


226         THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS. 

not  determined  by  immediate  reference  to  such 
and  such  a  thing :  we  cannot  think  "  this  is  a 
tree;"  and  accordingly  each  person  forms  his  own 
judgment,  and  attaches  a  different  interpretation 
to  the  vocable.  The  term  is  not  defined  by  its 
external  object,  and  language  has  not  yet  arrived 
at  the  explication  of  its  words  by  other  means. 
In  this  way  the  Aryan  roots  might  easily  have 
come  to  have  those  vague  general  significations 
which  are  ascribed  to  them,  although  they  pro- 
perly represented  individual  objects  and  actions. 

But  we  must  not  forget  that  the  so-called  root- 
stage  of  Aryan  speech  is  very  questionable  in  the 
shape  in  which  it  is  usually  set  before  us.  So  far 
as  our  data  go,  there  is  no  reason  for  believing  that 
the  Aryan  was  ever  otherwise  than  inflectional, 
however  unlike  the  primitive  inflections  may  have 
been  to  those  with  which  we  are  familiar.  "We 
can  only  be  certain  of  this  much,  that  there  was  a 
time  when  the  primitive  Aryan  spoke  a  language 
far  simpler  than  that  with  which  we  are  acquain- 
ted, in  which  the  words  were  for  the  most  part 
short,  few,  and  of  indefinite  meaning,  and  that 
this  earlier  and  barbarous  condition  was  succeeded 
by  what  I  would  call  the  Epithet -stage.  To 
identify  this  epithet-stage,  however,  with  in- 
flection is  altogether  unwarranted,  and  (as  I  hope 
I  have  shown)  contrary  to  the  facts.      The   root- 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS.  227 

period  is  not  inconsistent  with  a  rudimentary  in- 
flection, and  the  epithet-period  points  to  a  vast 
series  of  bygone  ages,  to  an  advanced  civilisation, 
and  to  the  development  of  the  higher  poetical 
faculties.  When  the  moon  could  be  called  "  the 
measurer,"  the  tribe  must  have  left  barbarism  far 
behind.  It  was  still  a  tribe,  however,  and  we 
may  perhaps  assign  to  this  communism  the 
general  adoption  of  particular  epithets  for  special 
objects,  and  the  tenacity  with  which  they  were 
preserved  and  handed  down  when  once  adopted. 
At  any  rate,  the  individual  had  not  yet  emerged 
from  the  community  ;  but  this  was  inevitable 
when  the  imaginative  faculty  had  once  made  its 
appearance,  and  the  era  of  the  Rishis  could  not 
be  long  delayed. 

What  I  have  called  the  epithet-stage  is  of  great 
importance  in  the  history  of  our  group  of  lan- 
guages, since  it  supplies  in  great  measure  the 
answer  to  the  question  which  came  before  us  in  an 
earlier  chapter,  why  it  is  that  the  Aryan  family 
presents  such  a  singular  exception  to  the  usual  rule 
of  rapid  change  in  language  in  the  fixity  of  its 
grammar  and  lexicon.  Before  the  parent-tribe 
had  broken  up,  it  had  already  entered  upon  the 
later  period  of  linguistic  growth,  in  which  conven- 
tional custom  sets  its  stamp  upon  spoken  speech, 
and  consecrates  its  form  and  expression.      Lan- 


228  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS. 

guage  loses  its  early  creativeness  ;  the  very  fact  that 
new  words  have  to  be  coined  out  of  old  material 
by  a  metaphorical  use  of  the  latter  shows  that 
settled  habits  and  the  enlarged  sphere  of  imagina- 
tion have  to  a  great  extent  put  an  end  to  the 
invention  of  fresh  "  roots/'  while  the  common 
adoption  of  one  of  these  metaphors  to  express  an 
object  of  sense  demonstrates  the  extinction  of  the 
creative  faculty  and  the  stereotyped  conservatism 
of  the  speaker.  Men  have  become  at  once  too 
highly  imaginative  and  too  narrowly  conventional 
to  waste  their  energies  in  the  pastime  of  the  sav- 
age, the  coining  of  new  words.  In  fact,  language 
has  entered  upon  its  ceremonial  stage  when  the 
sounds  which  we  utter  have  been  made  the  subject 
of  a  conscious  exercise  of  thought^  and  the  mind 
has  been  called  upon  to  compare  some  new  object 
with  one  whose  name  has  already  been  furnished 
by  the  ancient  heirlooms  of  speech.  Sound  and 
sense  are  no  longer  commingled  in  chaotic  con- 
fusion ;  sense  becomes  distinct  and  clear,  and 
sound  is  made  subordinate  to  it.  A  so-called 
"  ceremonial  language,"  such  as  t\\e  Bhasa  Krama 
of  Java,  is  but  a  further  development  of  the 
epithet-stage,  by  definitely  confining  the  epithets 
to  persons  and  not  things.  Ceremonial  languages 
and  idioms  are  found  all  over  the  world,  as  in  the 
larger  islands  of  Polynesia,  or  in  the  ceremonial 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS.  229 

conjugation  of  the  Basque,  or  in  the  women's  lan- 
guage of  South  America  ;  and  they  testify  every- 
where to  an  incipient  fixity  of  language,  and  the 
beginning  of  a  settled  state  of  society.  Closely  akin 
to  these  ceremonial  languages  is  the  phenomenon 
which  meets  us  in  several  of  the  South  American 
dialects,  where  the  words  which  denote  "  head," 
"  body,"  "  eye,"  or  other  parts  of  the  person,  can- 
not be  named  without  personal  relation  being 
indicated  by  a  prefixed  possessive  pronoun,  or 
denied  by  a  negative  or  privative  prefix.  Thus 
"  head  "  is  in  Mbaya  na-guilo,  in  Abiponian  na- 
maiat,  in  Moxa  nu-ciuti ;  "  eye "  in  Mbaya  is 
ni-gecoge,  in  Abiponian  na-toele,  in  Moxa  ntt-eki, 
and  in  Mokobi  ni-cote,  where  na,  ni,  and  nu  signify 
"  my,"  reminding  us  of  the  Continental  milord. 
The  ceremonial  or  epithet-period  of  language  is  that 
in  which  I  would  place  the  origin  of  the  personal 
pronouns.  Bleek  has  shown  that  these  were  ori- 
ginally substantives,  meaning  "  servant,"  "  lord," 
"  reverence,"  and  the  like,  at  least  so  far  as  the 
Ba-ntu  idioms  of  South  Africa  are  concerned  ;  and 
the  same  fact  appears  in  those  languages  of  Asia, 
such  as  Chinese,  Malay,  and  Japanese,  in  which 
the  transparent  character  of  the  language  allows 
us  to  penetrate  to  their  primary  signification. 
Thus  the  Malay  ulun,  "  I,"  is  still  in  Lampong 
"  a  man ;"  and  the  Kawi  ngrvang,  "  I,"  cannot  be 


230         THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS. 

separated  from  nwang,  "  a  man."  To  assert  that 
this  transmutation  of  expressions  like  "  your  rever- 
ence," or  ohe  6  av-qp,  into  personal  pronouns  belongs 
to  a  late  epoch  of  linguistic  development,  is  to 
re-state  my  own  position  in  other  words  ;  while 
the  attempt  to  resolve  the  nominative  of  the 
Aryan  first  personal  pronoun  (akam,  ego),  for  in- 
stance, into  two  "  pronominal  elements,"  ma  +  ga, 
breaks  down  at  the  very  threshold.  Initial  m 
is  never  lost  in  the  Aryan  languages  generally, 
although  it  may  disappear  in  Greek  through  the 
medium  of  the  digamma,  as  in  fiaXevpov  by  the 
side  of  akevpov,  i.e.,  ^aXeupov  from  s-a\eco,  or 
/u-to<?  by  the  side  of  Ire'a,  the  Latin  mere,  vimen ; 
while  ga,  the  Greek  -ye,  is  still  found  in  the  Rig- 
Veda  as  the  aspirated  gha.  To  metamorphose  the 
singular  ma  into  the  plural  nas,  as  has  been 
attempted  by  some  over-hasty  adherents  of  the 
pronominal  theory,  does  violence  to  all  the  phono- 
logical laws  of  Indo-European  speech.  In  my 
"  Assyrian  Grammar,"  I  have  suggested  that  a 
comparison  of  the  cognate  dialects  would  lead  us  to 
infer  that  the  original  form  of  the  first  two  personal 
pronouns  in  Semitic  was  the  same,  'ecet,  which 
reminds  us  of  the  Ethiopic  acata,  "  to  honour  "  or 
"  thank  ; "  while  the  third  personal  pronoun  can  be 
proved  to  have  originally  been  su'u,  which  may 
be  akin  to  »T)$,  "  like,"  and  hence  "  companion." 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS.  231 

The  epithet-stage,  therefore,  would  have  been 
the  closing  portion  of  the  root-period,  or  the 
commencement  of  the  secondary  period  of  ana- 
lysis (not  of  flection),  according  to  the  point 
of  view  which  we  prefer  to  take.  Its  deter- 
mination can  no  more  settle  the  nature  of  roots 
or  the  existence  of  flection  during  the  root-period 
than  those  falsely-called  flections  like  -clom  and 
-heady  which  I  discussed  in  a  former  chapter. 
The  root  remains  where  it  was  before, —  the 
residuum  of  a  group  of  words  in  which  the  lexi- 
cographer has  discovered  a  common  combination 
of  sounds  and  a  common  meaning,  but  which 
could  never  have  formed  part  of  a  spoken  lan- 
guage, and  which,  from  the  first,  while  denoting 
the  individual  and  the  concrete,  was  yet  vague  in 
meaning  and  indefinite  in  pronunciation,  and 
capable  of  being  used  for  all  the  parts  of  speech. 
This,  however,  was  owing  to  the  fact  that  language 
begins  with  the  sentence  and  not  with  the  indivi- 
dual word  ;  the  latter  is  the  last  growth  of  time, 
the  last  result  of  simplification  and  reflection.  Of 
itself,  the  radical  was  as  purely  the  mark  of  a 
single  object  of  sense  as  any  of  the  words  which 
denote  various  sorts  of  tails  in  the  idioms  of  the 
Sandwich  Islanders  ;  but  this  signification  was  ex- 
tended by  its  use  as  a  sentence-word  or  judgment; 
for,  properly  speaking,  the  primitive  Aryan  had 


232  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS. 

no  conception  of  a  single  object  apart  from  the 
universal;  such  a  distinction  requires  comparison, 
and  as  yet  individual  and  general  were  blended 
into  one,  the  general  being  an  extended  individual, 
and  the  individual  a  specialised  universal.  With- 
out a  world  there  can  be  no  individual.  Now 
the  naming  of  each  thing  according  to  its  mo- 
mentary impression  upon  the  senses  would  neces- 
sarily give  rise  to  an  infinite  multitude  of  names, 
not  only  for  objects  which  seemed  to  differ  in 
some  small  particular,  but  also  for  the  same  ob- 
ject according  to  the  time  or  circumstances  under 
which  it  struck  the  senses.  This,  coupled  with 
the  early  creativeness  of  language,  which  we  still 
see  exemplified  among  the  lower  races  of  mankind, 
would  produce  an  endless  number  of  words.  The 
vocables,  which  at  different  times  or  at  the  same 
time  served  to  point  out  the  same  thing,  would 
have  been  as  multitudinous  as  the  dialects  which 
I  have  endeavoured  in  a  preceding  chapter  to 
show  were  the  real  primitive  centres  of  spoken 
speech.  This  is  the  only  way  in  which  we  can 
account  for  the  existence  of  synonymous  roots, 
which  become  more  plentiful  as  the  language 
which  we  are  handling  is  less  developed.  Thus  the 
Caribs  express  the  same  notion  by  very  different 
roots,  according  to  Adelung ; *  and  Professor  Key 

1  Mith.  iii.  2,  6S6,  cf.  Rochefort,  3G4. 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  BOOTS.  233 

is  not  the  only  person  who  lias  been  astonished 
at  the  immense  number  of  radicals  in  Sanskrit 
which  all  mean  "  to  go."  We  have  already  had 
occasion  to  notice  in  a  preceding  page  the  fertility 
of  savage  tribes  in  inventing  new  words,  and  the 
rapid  change  in  the  vocabulary  that  takes  place 
among  them.  Perhaps  one  of  the  most  striking 
instances  of  this  in  recent  times  is  to  be  found  in 
the  island  of  Tasmania,  where,  with  a  population 
of  no  more  than  fifty  persons,  there  were  no  less 
than  four  dialects,  each  with  a  different  word  for 
"  ear,"  "  eye,"  "  head,"  and  other  similarly  com- 
mon words.  Even  our  own  semi-fossilised  lan- 
guage has  not  altogether  lost  the  power  of  striking 
out  new  roots,  as  may  be  proved  by  a  reference  to 
a  slang  dictionary  or  a  scientific  encyclopaedia  ; 
and  this  may  give  us  some  idea  of  the  boundless 
inventiveness  of  language  before  it  had  been 
crystallised  by  convention  and  a  fixed  society.  In 
fact,  just  as  the  languages  of  the  world  with  which 
we  are  acquainted  have  arisen  out  of  the  wrecks 
of  numberless  forgotten  attempts  at  speech,  so 
the  roots  presupposed  by  the  lexicon  are  the  selec- 
ted relics  of  an  infinite  wealth  of  primitive  sen- 
tence-words ;  for  here,  too,  as  elsewhere,  natural 
selection  has  come  into  play,  and  the  progress  of 
civilisation  has  been  to  unify  and  minimise  the 
inexhaustible  prodigality  of  nature.     In  the  same 


234  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS. 

way,  the  indefinite  variety  of  meanings  which  it 
was  possible  to  evolve  out  of  each  sentence-word 
was  gradually  reduced,  until  every  idea  had  its 
own  appropriate  sound,  and  the  sentence  was 
resolved  into  its  individual  words,  like  the  word 
into  its  individual  letters.  But  this  individualis- 
ing of  the  isolated  word  is  the  last  result  of  time 
and  thought ;  and  so  far  as  our  data  warrant  us 
to  infer,  there  was  never  a  period  when  the  root 
existed  in  its  naked  simplicity,  any  more  than  there 
was  when  the  letter  or  the  syllable  existed  apart 
from  the  root.  Both  are  figments  of  the  grammar- 
ian  and  the  lexicographer,  the  convenient  analyses 
of  the  modern  student.  Flection  in  the  Aryan 
tongues  implies  a  preceding  flection  upon  which 
it  was  modelled  ;  and  a  large  proportion  of  the 
radicals,  as  we  have  seen,  can  only  be  used  for  the 
purposes  of  comparison  by  being  treated  as  bases. 
This  at  once  makes  them  dissyllables,  that  is,  no 
longer  monosyllabic  roots — the  same  conclusion 
to  which  we  are  led  by  a  consideration  of  such 
words  as  b/uis,  b/mm,  st/idt,  st/uitar,  with  identical 
significations  ;  and  when  we  recollect  that  k  was 
constantly  followed  by  u,  we  see  that  there  is 
a  whole  class  of  roots  like  loqu-or,  which  could 
never  have  existed  in  a  monosyllabic  form  in  spoken 
speech.1      Forms  such  as  ad-mi,  which  present  us 

1  Fick  (in  his    "  Ebemalige    Sprackeiiiheit    der    Iudogeruiauen 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS.  235 

with  the  bare  radical  immediately  attached  to  the 
later  inflection  of  the  epithet-epoch,  had  better  be 
explained  as  the  consequences  of  phonetic  decay, 
like  our  own  English  monosyllables,  than  as  the 
evidences  of  an  imaginary  "  root-period,"  since 
the  tendency  of  language  is  towards  attrition  and 
contraction  rather  than  extension  and  increase. 

Another  one-sided  theory,  which  has  for  some 
time  formed  part  of  the  doctrine  of  roots,  is,  that 
we  must  seek  in  them  for  the  origin  of  language. 
Accordingly  we  have  had  attempts  to  derive  them 
from  the  imitation  of  natural  sounds,  or  from 
emotional  interjections,  or  again  from  a  kind  of 
intuitive  inspiration.  Geiger  believes  that  they 
have  originated  in  the  endeavour  to  imitate  the  ges- 
tures and  muscular  expression  of  emotion;  Bleek 
would  evolve  them  from  the  cries  of  animals,  or 
rather  the  inarticulate  sounds  made  by  the  an- 
thropoid apes.  The  failure  of  these  attempts,  the 
impossibility  of  supporting  any  one  of  them  by 

Europa's  "),  following  in  the  wake  of  Ascoli,  has  proved  convincingly 
the  existence  of  two  £'s  in  the  Parent- Aryan,  one  of  them  passing 
into  kiv  {qu)  in  certain  of  the  European  dialects.  Havet,  criticis- 
ing Fick  in  the  Memoires  de  la  Societe  de  Linguistique  de  Paris,  ii. 
4  (1874),  in  an  article  entitled  "  L'Unite  Europeenne,"  shows  that 
the  two  k's  are  to  be  tabulated  thus  : — 

Primitive  k  =  Ital.  k  (c)  ;  Greek  k  ;  German  h  ;  Aric  or  East 
Aryan  s  ;  Slav,  s  ;  Lith.  i. 

Primitive  kw  =  Aric  k,  t',  p,  Tew  {leu) ;  Gaelic  Jc ;  Cymr.  p  ;  Latin 
lew  {qu)  ;  Osco-umbrian  p  ;  Greek  ir,  kv  ;  Ionic  k  ;  German  hv, 
f  (p),  h  ;  Lettoslav.  k,  p,  kw  {ku). 


236  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS. 

the  facts  of  language  alone,  has  brought  about 
a  reaction  against  inquiries  into  the  origin  of 
language  at  all,  and  the  Societe  de  Linguistique 
of  Paris  has  refused  to  receive  any  papers  bearing 
upon  the  subject.  But  because  the  determination 
of  the  matter  lies  beyond  the  boundaries  of  Glot- 
tology  taken  by  itself,  it  by  no  means  follows 
that  it  is  either  useless  or  insoluble.  On  the  con- 
trary, Glottology  is  an  historic  science,  and  we 
can  never,  therefore,  understand  the  problems  of 
language  properly  until  we  have  solved  the  riddle 
of  its  origin.  But  this  can  only  be  done  by  the 
aid  of  other  sciences  ;  Glottology  cannot  go  beyond 
the  limits  of  language,  and  physiology  and  psycho- 
logy  must  explain  the  rest.  As  glottologists,  we 
have  to  begin  with  roots ;  they  are  the  first  facts 
to  which  we  can  ascend.  The  decomposition  of 
the  roots  themselves,  the  germs  out  of  which  they 
have  grown,  belong  to  other  branches  of  study. 
All  that  we  can  do  is  to  ascertain  clearly  the 
nature  of  these  roots  and  to  fix  their  limits ;  to 
determine,  in  short,  where  language  first  takes  its 
start,  and  ceases  to  be  the  inarticulate,  unconscious 
utterance  of  instinctive  desire.  The  difficulty  that 
meets  us  here  is  one  that  presents  itself  everywhere 
to  the  student  of  nature.  There  is  no  break,  no 
sudden  gap  in  nature ;  all  follows  in  a  regular 
unbroken  order.     All  sharp  lines  of  demarcation, 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS.  237 

therefore,  must  be  artificial ;  our  genera  and 
species,  our  strata  and  our  periods,  in  fine,  our 
classifications  generally,  exist  only  for  the  pur- 
poses of  science.  Ideal  types  there  certainly  are, 
around  which  the  phenomena  group  themselves ; 
but  the  groups  pass  insensibly  one  into  the  other, 
and  we  can  only  draw  our  lines  of  division  to  a 
great  extent  arbitrarily.  This  is  the  case  with  lan- 
guage ;  we  can  determine  on  which  side  of  the 
line  language  must  be  placed,  and  on  which  side 
mere  inarticulate  cries,  but  the  line  itself  is  a 
shifting  one,  and  can  only  be  laid  down  approxi- 
mately. To  believe,  therefore,  that  roots  are 
simply  interjections  or  the  imitations  of  sounds,  is 
to  confuse  the  two  sides  of  the  line  of  division, 
and  to  ignore  the  difference  between  language  and 
inarticulate  utterance.  Roots  are  not  emotional 
or  imitational  cries,  although  they  may  have 
grown  out  of  them  ;  but  the  investigation  of  the 
process  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  science  of  lan- 
guage. The  Aryan  dictionary  may  be  reduced  to 
a  certain  number  of  radicals ;  but,  after  all,  we 
have  only  found  the  origin  of  the  dictionary,  not 
of  language.  Consequently  it  is  beside  the  mark 
either  to  quote  instances  of  derivatives  from  inter- 
jections or  natural  sounds,  like  the  Chinese  ngo, 
"  stop,"  smdmiau,  "  cat,"  in  defence  of  the  "  pooh- 
pooh  "  and  "  bow-wow  "  theories  of  the  origin  of 


238  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS. 

speech,  or  to  attempt  to  refute  them  by  showing 
that  supposed  examples  of  imitation,  like  thunder 
or  raven  (corvus),  turn  out  to  have  their  origin  in 
roots  of  very  different  sound.  The  utmost  that 
Glottology  can  do  is  to  show  that  words  have 
actually  been  derived  from  both  these  sources 
within  the  historic  period ;  and  in  that  case 
analogy  may  justify  us  in  concluding  that  the 
primitive  man  may  have  arrived  at  his  roots  in  a 
similar  manner.  But  there  is  no  proof  of  this, 
so  far  as  philology  is  concerned ;  and  although 
the  mind  may  pass  from  vague  natural  cries  into 
the  higher  forms  of  speech  when  it  has  come  to  a 
state  of  consciousness,  it  is  hard  to  see  how  the 
process  could  have  been  performed  when  the  mind 
was  yet  unconscious — how,  in  other  words,  the 
mind  could  have  passed  from  unconsciousness  to 
consciousness  and  its  expression.  To  say  that  this 
happened  through  intuitive  inspiration  is  merely 
to  state  the  question  in  a  different  way.  We 
want  to  know  where  this  inspiration  came  from, 
and  how  the  mind  first  became  conscious.  But 
this  is  plainly  a  matter  for  psychology  and  not 
Glottology  ;  and  we  can  only  see  this  much,  that 
as  language  is  the  outward  expression  and  em- 
bodiment of  conscious  thought,  it  must  have  had 
much  to  do  with  the  development  of  consciousness, 
which  becomes  possible  when  thought  can  make 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS.  239 

itself  objective,  and  so  regard  itself.  Language  is 
the  counter-side  and  utterance  of  society ;  with 
society  it  begins  and  with  society  it  ends.  Before 
society  there  is  no  language  properly  so  called, 
because  there  is  no  conscious  thought,  no  inter- 
course between  man  and  man ;  and  consequently 
our  linguistic  researches  will  be  bounded  by  the 
limits  of  social  science  and  social  archaeology.  As 
we  cannot  get  beyond  the  family  in  the  one,  so 
we  cannot  get  beyond  the  existing  monuments 
of  speech  in  the  other. 

It  is  clear,  then,  that  Glottology  must  confine 
itself  within  the  boundaries  of  the  period  of  roots, 
and  transfer  its  attention  from  the  question  of  their 
origin  to  the  investigation  into  their  nature.  In 
a  former  chapter  I  have  endeavoured  to  point  out 
that  roots  are  by  no  means  necessarily  monosyllabic, 
and  that  the  theory  that  they  are  so  is  one  of  the 
idol  a  generated  by  the  over- weight  given  to  the 
Aryan  family.  It  is  bound  up  with  the  belief  that 
the  Semitic  radicals  were  originally  biliteral.  The 
latter  notion  has  been  much  encouraged  by  the 
analytic  character  of  Aryan,  and  the  essential 
difference  between  the  two  families  of  speech  has 
been  overlooked.  But  although  the  attempt  to 
resolve  the  Semitic  roots  into  more  ultimate 
elements  breaks  down,  it  does  not  at  all  follow 
that  the  result  is  the  same  in  the  Aryan  group. 


240  THE  DOCTBINE  OF  ROOTS. 

Throughout  this  reigns  the  spirit  of  analysis,  and 
it  is  very  possible,  therefore,  that  the  Aryan  roots 
are  capable  of  still  further  decomposition.  Com- 
position and  inflection  are  the  distinguishing  fea- 
tures of  this  family  of  speech,  and  the  so-called 
root-period  may  be  only  the  closing  era  of  a  still 
older  root-period.  This  probability  is  strongly 
confirmed  by  a  fact  which  it  is  hard  to  explain 
from  any  other  cause,  the  occurrence,  namely,  of 
roots  with  similar  meanings  which  differ  only 
in  the  final  consonants.  Thus  we  find  beside 
blicl  (077/1,/),  bhan  ((paivay),  b/ias,  and  bkav  (cpavos, 
favilla);  beside  sta  (stare),  stap  (stipare),  stambh 
(stamp),  star  (o-repeo?),  stal  (stellen),  and  stav 
((TTdvpos).  In  accordance  with  this,  Professor  Pott 
has  sought  to  analyse  the  so-called  roots,  and  to 
make  out  that  all  those  which  enclose  two  con- 
sonants are  compounds,  so  that  the  earliest  form 
of  Aryan  would  have  resembled  the  Polynesian 
dialects,  in  which  each  syllable  must  end  in  a 
vowel.  A  large  proportion  of  these  compounds, 
Pott  believes,  contain  a  preposition  ;  thus  pbi], 
"  painting,"  comes  from  apt  (eir/)  and  a??j, 
"  anointing."  Professor  Curtius1  unres  several 
objections  of  great  force  against  this  view. 
In  the  first  place,  these  compounded  roots  are 
treated  in  word-building  just  like  other  primitive 

1   "Grundziige  der  Griecliischen  Etymologie,"  pp.  34-41. 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  EOOTS.  241 

roots,  and  whereas  initial  api  in  Sanskrit  may 
became  pi,  this  is  never  the  case  in  Greek.  The 
loss  of  the  vowel,  therefore,  is  a  peculiarity  of 
Sanskrit,  and  could  not  have  occurred  in  the 
parent- Aryan.  Then,  secondly,  there  was  no  such 
close  and  intimate  amalgamation  of  the  preposi- 
tion and  the  root  in  early  times  as  is  necessitated 
by  Pott's  analysis.  Even  in  Greek  and  Sanskrit 
the  nominal  and  independent  origin  of  the  pre- 
positions is  so  clearly  felt  that  the  augment  and 
the  reduplication  are  inserted  between  the  pre- 
position and  the  verbal  form.  Latin  and  Greek 
themselves  possess  but  few  compounded  roots  in 
common. 

But  although  Pott's  theory  must  be  resigned,  it 
is  yet  certain  that  many  of  the  roots  are  really 
compounds.  The  radical  yu  cannot  be  separated 
from  yug  and  yudh,  or  the  radical  tar  from  tras 
and  tram,  trak  (torqu-eo)  and  trap  (trepidus),  trib 
(rpLftco)  and  trup  (jpvir-avov).  Curtius  1  suggests 
that  the  longer  forms  are  really  compounded  out 
of  two  other  roots,  yudh,  for  instance,  being  amal- 
gamated with  dha  (a  do  "),  and  the  k  in  trak  being 
the  same  as  the  guttural  which  distinguishes  \i6aK. 
from  \i6o.  In  this  case  the  compounded  roots 
would  have  originally  been  dissyllabic,  yu-d/ia  and 

1  "  Zur  Chronologie  d.  Indogermanischen  Sprachforschung,"  pp. 
28-30  (2d  edit.) 

Q 


242  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS. 

tar-ka.  The  suggestion  is  undoubtedly  a  true  one. 
We  can  hardly  explain  in  any  other  way  such 
roots  as  vridh  and  riclk,  "  growing,"  dd  and  dam, 
"binding;"  and  the  theory  would  be  very  con- 
sistent with  the  view  that  the  root-period,  as  far 
as  it  existed  at  all,  was  a  period  of  rudimentary 
inflection,  which  preceded  the  more  advanced 
epoch  of  epithet-making.  The  theory  is  also 
borne  out  by  the  analogy  of  the  Turanian  lan- 
guages. This  group  is  still  getting  but  scanty 
attention  from  glottologists,  and  until  lately  we 
could  only  study  it  in  modern  idioms.  Accadian, 
however,  has  given  us  a  background  for  com- 
parison older  than  the  language  of  the  Rig- Veda  ; 
and  the  clear  transparent  character  of  the  Tura- 
nian group  enables  us  to  obtain  more  certain  re- 
sults than  where  we  have  to  contend  with  all  the 
obscurities  of  phonetic  decay.  Now,  the  Accadian 
roots,  simple  as  they  appear,  nevertheless  contain 
compounds  in  which  the  elements  are  as  closely 
amalgamated  as  they  would  be  in  the  Aryan  roots 
were  Curtius's  opinion  correct.  Thus  is,  "  a  heap," 
is  compounded  with  c,  tl  house,"  to  form  es,  "  a 
building,"  and  with  me,  "  multitude,"  to  form 
meSj  "  nian}\"  The  latter  word  would  be  of  great 
antiquity,  if,  as  I  believe,  the  final  s  which  marks 
the  third  person  plural  of  the  past  tense  is  a  rem- 
nant of  it.     AVe  thus  have  composition  in  Tura- 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS.  243 

nian,  in  which  the  two  factors  are  so  welded  to- 
gether as  to  become  practically  one  word,  carried 
back  to  a  very  remote  period ;  and  yet  the  genius 
of  the  Turanian  languages  is  thoroughly  averse  to 
composition  at  all. 

But  we'  must  never  forget  that  we  may  easily 
carry  analysis  too  far.  We  cannot  judge  the 
primitive  savage  by  our  rules  of  simplicity.  On 
the  contrary,  simplicity  is  the  result  of  progress 
and  culture ;  the  farther  we  go  back,  the  nearer 
we  approach  the  natural  state,  the  more  do  we 
meet  with  the  iutricate  multiplicity  of  nature. 
Nothing  can  be  more  intricate,  more  complex, 
than  the  grammar  of  the  Red  Indian  or  the 
Eskimaux ;  the  simplicity  of  our  own  grammar 
is  the  result  of  a  long  series  of  comprehensive 
generalisations  and  analyses  of  thought.  Out 
of  the  manifold  comes  the  simple,  out  of  the 
multitudinous  the  single.  All  progress  in  philo- 
sophy and  science  is  the  reduction  of  the  many 
to  the  one.  It  is  the  same  with  the  lexicon 
as  with  the  grammar.  The  meaning  of  words 
begins  with  a  confused  vagueness,  out  of  which 
definite  forms  with  definite  significations  are 
gradually  evolved.  Language  is  the  expression 
of  thought ;  and  the  first  ideas  were  as  much  un- 
differentiated embryos  as  the  jelly-fish  on  the 
shore    or    the    beehive    life    of    primeval    man. 


244  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS. 

There  was  no  unity  in  them  ;  idea  had  not  yet 
been  subordinated  to  idea ;  but  each  was  the  mere 
individual  impression  of  the  moment,  with  all  the 
vagueness  and  complexity  of  a  sensation.  Accord- 
ingly, we  must  not  expect  to  find  simplicity  of 
form,  any  more  than  simplicity  of  content  or  sig- 
nification, in  the  root-period ;  and  the  reversal  of 
this  is  the  most  serious  argument  against  Pott's 
hypothesis.  As  Bleek  points  out,  many  of  our 
involuntary  sounds,  such  as  sneezing,  for  instance, 
are  by  no  means  simple  and  monosyllabic ;  and 
whatever  may  be  the  origin  of  language,  it  is 
certain  that  on  the  phonetic  side — the  side,  that  is, 
of  the  non-mental  physiological  machinery — we 
can  draw  no  distinction  between  emotional  cries 
and  articulate  utterance.  The  clicks  of  the  Hot- 
tentot cannot  be  called  either  simple  or  eas}r ;  and 
yet  it  is  impossible  to  explain  these  as  a  later 
accretion  to  the  language ;  they  go  back  to  the 
very  roots  of  it,  and  may  possibly  be  a  relic  of 
what  once  characterised  most  of  the  other  lan- 
guages of  the  world,  but  has  since  been  lost 
through  the  influence  of  phonetic  decay.1     Phonetic 

1  Clicks  and  diphthongs  have  disappeared  "  in  the  grammatical 
elements  of  the  Hottentot  language,"  "  though  three-fourths  of  this 
language  may  be  said  to  contain  clicks,"  according  to  Bleek's  "  Com- 
parative Grammar  of  South  African  Languages,"  i.  p.  47.  The 
same  writer  quotes  from  Von  Klaproth  the  assertion  that  clicks  occur 
in  the  Circassian  tongue;  "and  two  clicks  are  distinguished  in 
the  T'iche  language,  spoken  in  Guatemala,  of  which  an  old  Spanish 
grammar  is  in  manuscript  in  Sir  G.  Grey's  library." 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS.  245 

decay  is  but  another  name  for  laziness,  for  the 
effort — for  effort  it  is — to  save  trouble  in  speak- 
ing ;  and  it  is  the  great  principle  of  change  in  all 
lanoriao-es.  We  can  no  longer  talk  of  the  inter- 
change  of  letters,  except  loosely ;  sounds  can  only 
pass  into  one  another  in  accordance  with  strict 
physiological  laws,  and  the  action  of  these  is 
determined  by  the  endeavour  to  facilitate  pronun- 
ciation. K,  the  harder  sound,  may  become  A,  but 
the  reverse  cannot  take  place  unless  other  laws 
interfere.  When,  therefore,  we  find  that  an 
English  t  answers  to  a  Greek  8  and  a  German  z, 
we  cannot  suppose  that  the  more  difficult  t  has 
been  adopted  instead  of  the  easier  d ;  and  jet,  to 
assume  that  the  Gothic  t  has  remained  faithful  to 
the  original  sound,  while  the  d  of  Sanskrit,  Greek, 
and  Latin  exhibits  phonetic  decay,  would  leave 
the  High  German  z  altogether  unexplained.  The 
only  interpretation  of  the  facts  which  is  allowable 
is,  that  all  these  sounds  have  been  independent 
differentiations  of  one  original  obscure  sound 
which  contained  within  itself  the  other  clearer 
consonants  ;  just  as  the  meaning  of  the  root-word 
has  been  gradually  worked  out,  until  the  unde- 
veloped conceptions  that  lay  implicit  in  it  have 
been   severally   marked   off  one   from  the  other.1 

1  This  primitive  indistinctness  of  uttered  sounds  will  not  be 
sufficient,  of  course,  to  explain  the  phenomena  of  Grimm's  law. 
Indeed,    the  mere  fact  that  the  Aryan  family  had   arrived   at  a 


246  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS. 

My  friend  Mr  Sweet  has  come  to  the  conclusion 
that  primitive  man  could  only  roughly  distinguish 
between  sounds,  just  as  he  could  only  roughly 
distinguish  between  ideas  and  the  relations  of 
grammar.  The  belief  is  borne  out  by  all  the  facts 
which  we  have  at  our  disposal.  The  musical  ear 
is  as  much  the  creation  of  a  high  civilisation  as  the 
eye  of  the  painter  ;  and  the  modern  savage  finds  his 
music  only  in  the  rudest  and  coarsest  high-pitched 
notes.  It  is  naturally  the  same  with  phonetic 
speech.  The  appreciation  of  the  delicate  distinc- 
tions of  sound  which  have  resulted  in  poetry  and 
music  on  the  one  hand,  and  in  languages  like 
Greek  on  the  other,  is  unknown  to  the  barbarian. 
The  Sandwich  Islander  cannot  discover  any  differ- 
ence between  c  and  t ;  and  when  we  rise  higher  in 

comparatively  high  stage  of  culture  before  the  different  branches 
of  it  separated  from  each  other,  shows  that  the  speakers  had  left 
the  root-period  and  its  adjuncts  far  behind.  Nevertheless,  it  has 
exercised  a  certain  amount  of  influence  upon  the  curious  shifting 
of  sounds  which  Grimm  first  pointed  out,  as  in  the  case  of  I  and  r  : 
the  rest  will  be  due  to  tribal  idiosyncrasies,  acted  upon  by  climate 
and  food,  and  assisted  by  the  power  of  analogy.  As  for  the 
original  alphabet  which  is  supposed  to  have  been  possessed  by  our 
remote  ancestors,  consisting  of  the  letters  a,  ?',  u,  I  or  r,  n,  m,  h 
(with  gh,  dh,  and  bh),  s,  g,  d,  b,  k  (ho),  t,  and  p,  it  is,  like  the  root- 
language,  a  logical,  not  an  historical,  starting-point.  It  is  the 
result  of  the  analysis  and  comparison  of  later  forms  of  speech,  and 
as  little  an  historical  reality  as  the  jus  gentium  which  the  Romans 
believed  they  had  arrived  at  by  combining  all  that  was  alike  in  the 
laws  and  custom  of  existing  nations  and  excluding  the  rest,  or 
the  "  natural  religion"  of  the  divines  of  the  last  century. 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS.  247 

the  scale  of  civilisation,  we  see  the  Chinese  trans- 
forming Christ  into  Ki-U-sse-tu.1  The  farther 
back  we  push  our  phonological  researches,  the 
greater  becomes  the  number  of  neutral  sounds. 
Ancient  Egyptian  made  no  difference  between  r 
and  I,  and  a  comparison  of  roots  would  show  that 
the  same  was  the  case  in  the  parent-Aryan. 
Arguing  from  the  alphabet,  we  should  conclude 
that  Sanskrit  was  once  unable  to  distinguish 
between  b  and  v,  and  Assyrian  writes  m  and  v 
with  the  same  character.  Finnish  has  but  eleven 
consonants,  and  no  Polynesian  language  more 
than  ten ;  while  some  Australian  dialects  contain 
only  eight,  with  three  variations.2  All  this  would 
go  far  to  show  that  the  number  of  sounds  pos- 
sessed by  early  language  was  extremely  small, 
and  that  these  were  mostly  of  a  neutral,  indistinct 
character,  and  what  we  should  consider  difficult  to 
pronounce.  A  satisfactory  explanation  would  thus 
be  afforded,  to  a  certain  extent,  of  the  phenomenon 

1  This  inability  of  the  Chinese  to  pronounce  many  of  the  con- 
sonants with  winch  we  are  familiar  is  curiously  illustrated  by  the 
strange  transformations  which  Hindu  names  and  words  have  under- 
gone in  the  Chinese  Buddhistic  literature,  and  which  formed  such 
an  obstacle  to  the  interpretation  of  this  until  M.  Stanislas  Julien 
showed  how  Buddha  had  become  Fo  ;  Benares,  Po-lo-nai;  or  Brahma, 
Fan.  In  contrast  with  the  Chinese  transformation  of  r  into  I  is 
the  Japanese  transformation  of  I  into  r.  According  to  Fabricius, 
the  women  in  Greenland  pronounce  h  at  the  end  of  words  as  ng, 
and  t  as  n. 

2  Max  Miiller,  "Science  of  Language,"  ii.  167. 


248  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS. 

before  alluded  to,  the  existence,  namely,  of  roots 
in  the  Aryan  family  which  differ  in  the  final 
consonant  or  consonants,  but  which  cannot  be 
separated  from  one  another,  owing  to  their 
similarity  of  meaning,  and  the  identity  of  their 
initial  or  characteristic  sound.  The  same  is  yet 
more  conspicuously  the  case  in  the  Semitic  group, 
where  roots  repeatedly  occur  which  agree  in  sig- 
nification, but  have  different  letters,  though  of  the 
same   class.      Thus  fSp,  DDp,  TO,  HO,  DO,  m  btt, 

-ia  Tin,  -to,  up,  rm  ra  ysrr,  nsn,  yzp,  isp, 

J1D3,  DDD,  iixn,  all  seems  to  contain  the  idea  of 
"  cutting,"  and  little  distinction  can  be  made  be- 
tween TO,  112,  and  Till-1 

The  root-period,  therefore,  was  characterised  by 
complexity,  indistinctness,  and  vagueness  in  sound, 
meaning,  and  grammar.  It  was  but  a  reflection 
of  the  hive-like  community,  in  which  the  parts 
were  as  yet  undistinguished,  and  the  several 
factors  of  society  lay  undeveloped  in  a  single 
embryonic  germ.  It  was  a  life  of  the  senses 
rather  than  of  the  mind,  in  which  the  past  and 
the  future  were  equally  ignored,  and  language  was 
employed  in  the  service  of  the  bodily  wants, 
principally  of  hunger.  Consequently  we  cannot 
expect  to  find  any  traces  of  spiritual  and  intellec- 
tual  conceptions  in   this  early  stage  of  articulate 

1  Renan,  "  Histoire  des  Langues  Sdmitiques,"  pp.  9G-99. 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS.         249 

speech.  The  oldest  roots  are  of  the  most  purely 
sensuous  description,  and  the  words  which  denote 
the  higher  ideas  of  religion  or  mind  are  derived 
from  these  by  the  help  of  metaphor,  metaphor 
itself  having  its  basis  in  the  objects  of  sense. 
Thus  in  the  Aryan  family,  dens,  Zevs,  was  "  the 
bright"  heaven,  anima  and  spiritns  are  "  the 
wind,"  and  soul  comes  from  "  the  heaving  ,!  of 
the  sea.  The  Semitic  ruakh,  "  the  breath  "  of  life, 
is  simply  the  breeze,  and  el,  "  God,"  is  "  the 
strong  "  one.  The  numerals  have  been  arrived  at 
in  the  same  way  :  three  was  originally  "  that 
which  goes  beyond"  (root  tar,  trans,  &c),  four 
was  "  (one)  and  three  "  (cha-trcar),  nine  was  the 
"  new  number  "  (navam)}  Even  the  pronouns 
themselves  may  have  a  similar  sensuous  origin. 

This  brings  me  to  the  last  idolum  connected 
with  the  doctrine  of  roots  to  which  I  shall  refer. 
It  is  generally  known  as  the  theory  of  Pronominal 
Roots,  and  assumes  that  language  at  its  first 
starting  possessed  a  large  number  of  words  which 
had  a  demonstrative  meaning  only,  and  formed 
a  great  part  of  the  material  of  inflection.  The 
theory  is  another  result  of  the  attempt  to  analyse 

1  The  fact  that  the  formation  of  these  numerals  belongs  to  the 
epithet-stage,  three  being  named  from  its  excess,  or  seven  from  its 
"following"  (saptan,  eirrd  from  eirto,  sequor)  the  foregoing  numbers, 
shows  the  comparatively  late  origin  of  the  Aryan  numerals. 


250  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS. 

flection  by  a  comparison  of  the  Aryan  languages 
alone.  We  meet  with  certain  roots,  such  as  ta, 
sa,  ya,  which  we  cannot  trace  back  to  any  other 
signification  than  that  of  the  demonstrative  pro- 
noun. Because  our  data  fail  us,  however,  we  are 
not  justified  in  asserting  that  the  demonstrative 
meaning  was  the  original  content  of  these  roots. 
Our  ignorance  does  not  allow  us  to  do  more  than 
affirm  that  these  roots  had  a  demonstrative  signi- 
fication so  far  back  as  we  can  go.  But  to  suppose 
that  such  was  their  first  and  original  force  leads 
us  into  great  difficulties.  We  may  pass  over  the 
objection  that  the  inventors  of  language  would 
not  have  found  such  words  mutually  intelligible, 
as  this  might  be  explained  by  the  instinctive 
uniformity  of  understanding  which  pervaded  the 
beehive  community  ;  but  how  could  the  savage 
elaborate  them  without  any  idea  of  contrast  ? 
Here  implies  there,  this  implies  that ;  but  in  the 
root-period,  in  the  beehive  life,  all  was  here  and 
all  was  this.  This  is  the  essential  nature  of  words 
with  the  chaotic  vagueness  of  meaning  which  we 
have  seen  characterised  the  so-called  roots,  as  well 
as  of  a  life  of  the  senses,  in  which  man  is  conscious 
of  the  passing  moment  only.  Moreover,  what 
need  could  there  have  been  for  such  words,  when 
the  root  contained  within  itself  all  the  significa- 
tion that  could  be  expressed  in  speech,  primarily 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  EOOTS.         251 

denoting  the  individual  object,  and  secondarily — 
since  there  was  no  idea  of  contrast,  and  so  of  dis- 
tinction between  the  individual  and  the  general 
— all  individual  objects  ?  Any  further  specifica- 
tion that  was  required  could  not  be  pointed  out 
in  language  ;  it  called  for  the  finger  and  the  eye. 
If  language  starts  with  sentences,  it  cannot  start 
with  the  demonstrative,  which  is  not  a  sentence. 
But  observed  facts  in  other  families  of  langu- 
ages do  not  support  the  pronominal  theory.  In 
Japanese  the  same  word  may  stand  for  all  three 
persons  ;  but  this  is  not  because  it  was  primi- 
tively a  demonstrative,  but  because  it  was  a  sub- 
stantive, such  as  "  servant,"  "  worshipper,"  and 
so  forth.1     Chinese  ki9  "  place,"  has  become  the 

1  See,  too,  Pott,  "Die  Ungleichheit  menschlicher  Rassen,"  pp.  5, 
6,  who  remarks  that  even  in  German  all  possible  pains  are  taken  to 
avoid  the  use  of  the  second  person,  and  that  where  "  Er  and  a  femi- 
nine Sie  "  fail,  recourse  is  had  to  the  uncivilised  method  of  denot- 
ing the  personal  pronoun  by  means  of  a  substantive.  The  use  of 
the  simple  pronoun  belongs  to  the  later  era  of  culture,  abstraction 
and  simplification,  and  expressions  like  "  Allerhochstselbst "  are  a 
survival  of  barbarism.  The  Chinese  scholar  will  say  ts'ie  ("the 
thief  ")  instead  of  "  I,"  and  tsidn  ("  bad  ")  and  ling  ("  noble  ")  are 
used  for  "mine"  and  "thine"  (Endlicher  :  "Chines.  Grammatik," 
pp.  25S-S9).  "  The  inhabitants  of  Ceylon,"  also,  according  to 
Adelung  (Mithr.,  i.  233),  "have  seven  or  eight  words  to  denote  the 
second  personal  pronoun."  Cf.  the  ceremonial  languages  men- 
tioned above,  pp.  215,  21G. 

Wherever  the  pronoun  has  been  successfully  analysed,  even  in  the 
inflectional  languages,  it  has  turned  out  to  be  an  old  substantive, 
which  gradually  came  to  lose  what  Mr  Eaiie  would  term  its  presen- 


252  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS. 

relative,  and  the  Semitic  relative,  whatever  its 
derivation  might  be,  was  properly  the  demon- 
trative.  It  is  the  same  with  Malay  and  Siamese, 
which  possess  an  extraordinary  number  of  pro- 
nouns of  the  first  and  second  persons,  employed 
according  to  the  rank  or  age  of  the  speaker,  but 
which  are  really  so  many  substantives.  A  close 
similarity  has  been  observed  in  many  languages 
between  the  demonstrative  and  the  substantive 
verb,  and  this  again  has  in  several  instances  been 

tive  meaning  and  to  become  merely  symbolic,  or  what  the  Chinese 
call  an  "empty  word."  For  English  examples  see  Earle's  "Philo- 
logy of  the  English  tongue,"  2d  edit.  p.  227  sq.  The  introduction 
of  the  pronominal-root  theory  into  Semitic  grammar  has  done  much 
mischief,  and  the  splendid  philological  labours  of  Ewald  and  Dill- 
mann  have  a  good  deal  to  answer  for  in  this  respect.  A  more 
searching  analysis,  however,  is  revealing  the  true  nature  of  those 
Semitic  words  whose  origin  and  etymology  have  been  solved  by 
the  easy  hypothesis  of  "pronominal  roots."  Thus  Praetorius  (in 
the  Z.  D.  M.  G.  xxvii.  4,  1873)  has  shown  that  the  Ethiopic  words 
lull  and  cii/d,  which  when  combined  with  suffixes  express  the  nomi- 
native or  accusative  of  the  personal  pronoun,  and  have  been  referred 
to  "primitive  demonstrative  stems"  by  Dillmann,  really  signified 
originally  "separation"  and  "entrails."  I  have  myself  been  as 
guilty  as  any  one  in  this  matter,  and  have  endeavoured  in  my 
"Assyrian  Grammar"  to  explain  the  Assyrian  mala,  "as  many  as," 
by  two  pronominal  roots.  Dr  Schrader,  however,  has  demonstrated 
its  derivation  from  mala,  "to  fill,"  and  thus  vindicated  its  substan- 
tival character.  Since  we  find  that  all  those  pronouns  which  can 
be  successfully  analysed  are  nothing  more  than  worn-out  substan- 
tives, we  are  justified  in  concluding  that  the  assumption  of  a 
pronominal  root  is  but  another  term  for  ignorance.  "  A  word  like 
the  French  car,"  says  Mr  Van  Eys  ("  Dictionnaire  Basque-Francais," 
p.  v.),  "would  pass  for  a  root  were  we  not  acquainted  with  its 
etymology." 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS.  253 

traced  back  to  a  sensuous  origin.  In  the  same 
direction  points  the  formation  of  the  demonstra- 
tives by  a  change  of  vowels,  of  which  Mr  Tylor 
has  collected  so  many  instances,  and  to  which 
others  might  be  added.  Thus  in  Javanese  iki  is 
"this,"  ika  "that,"  iku  "that  there;"  in  Japa- 
nese, ko  is  "  here,"  ka  "  there ;  "  in  Zornba,  na 
is  "this,"  ni  "that;"  in  Carib,  ne  is  "'thou," 
ni  is  "  he ;  "  in  Brazilian  Botocudo,  ati  is  "  I," 
oti  is  "  thou  ;  "  x  in  (African)  Tumali,  ngi  is  "  I," 
ngo  "  thou,"  and  ngu  "  he."  Such  a  distinction  by 
phonetic  means  alone  implies  a  late  period  of 
linguistic  development ;  one  of  the  forms  must 
have  preceded  the  other;  and  in  this  case  there 
would  have  been  no  contrast,  no  this  and  that, 
and  consequently  no  possibility  of  expressing 
the  demonstrative.  It  is  plain  that  substantives, 
and  not  pronominal  words,  would  first  have  been 
differentiated  in  this  way ;  and  accordingly  we 
find  the  Carib  baba,  "  father,"  contrasted  with 
bibi,  "mother;"  the  Mantschu  chacha,  "  man,"  and 
ama,  "  father,"  with  chec/ie,  "  woman,"  and  e?ne, 
"mother;"  the  Finnic  uMo,  "old  man,"  with  ahha, 
"old  woman ; "  and  the  African  Eboe  n?ia,  "father," 
with  nne,  "  mother,"  where  a  pretended  pronominal 
root  makes  its  appearance.  Similarly  the  distinc- 
tion between  the  primary  numerals  is  denoted  in 

1  Tylor,  "Primitive  Culture,"  vol.  i.  pp.  199-201. 


254  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS. 

the  same  manner  in  many  languages ;  thus  in 
Lushu,  tizi  is  "  one,"  tazi,  "  two  ;  "  "  three  "  and 
"  four  "  are  ngroka  and  ngraka  in  Koriak,  nvjohh 
and  nvjahh  in  Kolyma,  gnasog  and  gnasag  in  Ka- 
ra^a,  and  tsuk  and  tsaak  in  Kamtschatkan.  But 
the  expression  of  a  grammatical  relation  by  inter- 
nal phonetic  change  clearly  cannot  belong  to  a 
period  when  the  broadest  differences  of  sound  were 
confused  together,  and  the  utilisation  of  delicate 
vowel-distinctions  to  denote  nuances  of  meaning 
was  utterly  unknown  ;  and  accordingly,  we  find 
not  only  the  Aryan  languages  employing  vocalic 
changes  to  represent  verbal  differences  of  significa- 
tion only  gradually  and  tardily,  but  even  Semitic, 
in  which  internal  vocalic  change  plays  so  large 
a  part,  has  developed  the  three  case  terminations 
-u y  -i,  -a  out  of  an  original  a,  while  the  Bedouin 
even  now  pronounces  his  vowels  so  indistinctly 
that  it  is  often  impossible  to  say  which  vowel  pre- 
cisely is  represented.  In  fact,  the  pronominal  root 
theory  is  the  product  of  the  belief  that  the  in- 
flectional stage  of  Aryan  was  preceded  by  an 
agglutinative  stage.  Without  the  assumption  of 
pronominal  roots,  which  might  mean  anything  or 
nothing,  it  was  found  impossible  to  explain  many 
of  the  case-endings.  But  the  matter  seems  but 
little  mended  when  we  lay  down  that  the  nomi- 
native and  genitive  singular  as  well  as  the  plural 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS.  255 

number  are  all  formed  by  means  of  the  same  pro- 
nominal suffix  with  the  common  signification  of 
"  that."  * 

There  is  one  point  connected  with  this  subject 
of  roots  which  must  be  touched  upon  before  we 
finish  the  present  chapter.  The  several  members 
of  the  Aryan  family,  while  agreeing  in  the  main 
body  of  their  roots,  yet  exhibit  others  which 
seem  peculiar  to  each.  Greek,  Latin,  Teutonic, 
each  appear  to  possess  a  certain  number  of  radicals 
which  cannot  be  attached  to  roots  found  in  the 
cognate  languages  without  doing  violence  to  all 
the  laws  of  the  change  and  development  of  signi- 

1  Professor  Curtius  endeavours  to  meet  this  difficulty  by  the 
assumption  of  different  periods  at  which  the  nominative  and  genitive 
were  struck  out  of  the  same  colourless  mould.  I  have  already  discus- 
sed his  theory  (p.  151),  and  have  only  to  add  here,  that  no  explanation 
is  afforded  by  it  as  to  how  it  was  to  the  same  bare  root  or  theme 
(stem)  that  the  same  suffix  was  attached  with  such  astonishingly 
different  results,  or  how  the  pronoun  that  had  formed  the  chief  cases 
of  the  singular  could  again  pass  through  the  same  process  of  agglu- 
tination and  forgetfulness,  and  then  turn  out  a  plural !  Jacob 
Grimm  ("  Ueber  Etymologie  undSprachvergleichung,"  Kl.  Schrift. 
i.  312),  while  accepting  the  doctrine  of  pronominal  roots  as  existing 
during  the  assumed  period  of  "flection-building,"  yet  asserted  their 
ultimate  identity  with  concept  or  verbal  roots.  He  has  been 
followed  in  this  view  by  Schleicher  ("  Compendium,"  p.  612,  2d 
edit.)  and  Benfey,  who  would  have  the  pronouns  to  be  verbal  radi- 
cals. But  such  a  theory  gets  rid  of  only  half  the  difficulty — the 
impossibility  of  conceiving  how  a  "pronominal  root"  came  into 
existence,  aud  the  fact  that  modern  dialects,  which  admit  us  to  some 
of  the  secrets  of  language-making,  derive  the  pronouns  from  old 
substantives.  How  themes  and  flections  were  created  by  these 
empty  shadows  of  forgotten  substantives  is  still  left  unexplained. 


256  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ROOTS. 

fication.     There   are   many  words   the    etymology 
of  which  can  never  be  settled  by  Glottology,  or, 
to  speak  more  accurately,  which  refuse  to  be  com- 
pared  with    allied  words    in  other  dialects.      To 
attempt  to   discover  a  derivation  for  every  word 
in  the   Greek  Lexicon  will  only  end  in  error  and 
discomfiture.     We  seem  forced  to   conclude  that 
the  different  branches  of  our  race  have,  beside  their 
common    stock    of   roots,    others    of   native    and 
peculiar  origin  and  growth.     The  residuum  of  un- 
connected roots  which  scientific  philology  leaves 
in   each  Indo-European   language  is  an  evidence 
that  language  is  still  living,  is  still  the  outward 
expression     of     an     active     progressive     society. 
Literature   and   civilisation  will   do  much  to  re- 
strain that  unbounded  license  of  striking  out  new 
words  which  distinguishes  the  idioms  of  savage 
tribes ;  but  our  own  age  and  country  will  still  pro- 
duce such  inventions  as  absquatulate  and  swoggle, 
which  cannot  be  reduced  to  any  common  Aryan 
radical.      They  have   come   into   the  world   fully 
formed,   however  much  they  may  contain  sounds 
similar  to  those  in  words   of  like  meaning ;   and 
this  single  fact  is  a  striking  commentary  upon  the 
belief  that  our  ancestors  once   spoke   a  language 
of  roots.     The  root  is  the  unconsciously  conceived 
mental  block,  as  it  were,  out  of  which  our  words 
are    shaped;   but    to  imagine    that    it   was    ever 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  EOOTS.  257 

consciously  realised  in  speech  by  a  race  which  was 
afterwards  to  evolve  inflection  by  some  unexplained 
means,  is  not  only  improbable,  but  opposed  to  the 
data  before  us.  As  Professor  Pott  has  said,1 — 
"  There  is  no  inward  necessity  why  roots  should 
first  have  entered  into  the  reality  of  language, 
naked  and  formless;  it  suffices  that,  unpronounced, 
they  fluttered  before  the  soul  like  small  images, 
continually  clothed  in  the  mouth,  now  with  this, 
now  with  that  form,  and  surrendered  to  the  air  to 
be  drafted  off  in  hundred-fold  cases  and  combina- 
tions." 

1  As  quoted  by  Professor  Max  M  tiller,  "  Lectures,"  second  series, 
p.  85. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE   METAPHYSICS   OF   LANGUAGE. 

The  term  "  Metaphysics  of  Language  "  has  not 
been  very  happily  chosen.  It  can  only  be  defended 
upon  the  ground  that  pure  being  and  pure  thought 
are  identical,  and  that  the  generalisations  which 
sum  up  the  several  phenomena  introduce  a  mental 
element  foreign  to  the  phenomena  themselves,  and 
may  therefore  be  considered  to  partake  of  a  meta- 
physical character.  From  this  point  of  view  all 
scientific  laws  will  be  more  or  less  metaphysical ; 
and  we  can  hardly  refuse  this  title  to  such  trans- 
cendental conceptions  as  that  of  force.  A  con- 
ception like  this  has  nothing  answering  to  it  in 
material  nature.  We  see  certain  phenomena  hap- 
pening cotemporaneously  or  in  succession,  and 
we  imagine  a  bond  or  power  of  which  these  are 
the  result  and  manifestation,  and  to  which  we  give 
the  name  of  force.  Yet,  after  all,  this  power  is 
merely  a  mental  product  which  we  project  into  the 
world  of  the  senses.     Similarly  the  fundamental 


THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE.       259 

postulates  of  mathematics  pass  beyond  the  reach 
of  direct  experience.  We  know  very  well  that,  so 
far  as  our  experience  has  extended,  when  we  place 
two  things  by  the  side  of  two  other  things  we 
have  four  objects  before  us  ;  but  what  that  con- 
ception of  four  is  in  itself  is  a  matter  of  which  the 
senses  alone  cannot  inform  us.  There  are  some 
tribes  who  cannot  count  beyond  three,  or  rather, 
are  unable  to  generalise  so  far  as  four.  What 
numbers  are  in  themselves,  what  they  mean  and 
how  they  originate,  or  whether  they  are  universally 
true,  are  metaphysical  questions.  However  much 
their  verification  may  belong  to  observation  and 
experiment,  the  radical  ideas  of  number  generally 
and  of  the  numbers  specifically  fall  under  the  sphere 
of  metaphysics.  The  metaphysics  of  language, 
accordingly,  will  be  those  general  mental  con- 
ceptions which  underlie  the  phenomena  of  articu- 
late speech,  and  to  which  an  induction  of  the  latter 
will  conduct  us.  Thus  we  shall  have  to  place  under 
this  head  all  inquiries  into  the  origin  and  nature 
of  gender  or  of  declension,  the  nature  of  these  in 
an  historical  science  necessarily  implying  a  know- 
ledge of  their  origin.  Such  inquiries  are  no  new 
thing.  From  the  days  of  Plato's  Kratylus  down- 
ward attempts  have  been  made  to  solve  the  ob- 
vious questions  raised  by  a  consideration  of  lan- 
guage.   The  Greek  disputed  as  to  whether  language 


2  GO      THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE. 

originated  by  convention  {vofiw)  or  by  nature 
((frvaeL),  and  according  to  the  system  of  philo- 
sophy he  adopted,  ranged  himself  on  either  side. 
The  modern  form  of  the  discussion  would  be 
whether  or  not  the  relations  of  grammar,  along 
with  the  words  which  expressed  them,  grew  up 
spontaneously  and  instinctively,  or  were  settled  by 
an  arbitrary  compact  among  the  first  men  ?  or  in 
other  words,  whether  grammar  is  an  invented  art 
or  the  necessary  development  of  mind  ?  I  say 
grammar,  and  not  vocabulary,  because  although  it 
was  the  single  word  which  at  first  sight  seems  to 
have  attracted  Greek  speculation,  it  was  really  the 
relation  of  the  word  to  the  mind  and  the  gram- 
matical fulness  of  meaning  which  was  implicit  in 
it.  The  word  was  regarded  from,  the  side  of  its 
content,  and  not  of  its  outward  form ;  and  this 
perhaps  was  inevitable  when  the  native  language 
alone  was  known,  and  education  was  oral  rather 
than  literary.  The  attention  is  not  so  likely  to  be 
centred  upon  the  external  sound  of  words  until 
they  are  written  down  and  analysed  into  syllables 
and  letters.  Hence  it  is  not  surprising  that  the 
early  speculations  into  the  character  of  articulate 
speech  did  not  result  in  a  formal  grammar  until 
the  Greek  language  had  been  brought  into  col- 
lision with  the  Latin,  and  the  critical  era  of 
Alexandria  had  succeeded  to  the  old  political  life 


THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE.       261 

of  Greece.  A  regular  grammar  begins  with 
Dionysius  Thrax,  who  utilised  the  philological 
lucubrations  of  Aristotle  and  the  Alexandrian 
critics  for  the  sake  of  teaching  Greek  to  the  sons 
of  the  aristocratic  cotemporaries  of  Pompey  at 
Rome.  Before  his  time,  the  Sophists,  notably 
Prodikus,  had  made  a  rough  classification  of  the 
principal  parts  of  speech  for  the  purposes  of  ora- 
torical study  ;  but  without  the  contrast  afforded  by 
another  language,  these  classifications  could  not 
but  remain  confused  with  rhetoric,  and  devoid  of 
all  method  and  thoroughgoing'  arrangement.  In- 
deed  it  is  hard  to  understand  how  any  real  analysis 
of  a  language  can  be  made  unless  the  idea  has 
been  suggested  by  the  comparison  of  another  :  the 
grammatical  labours  of  the  Assyrian  scribes  in  the 
time  of  Sardanapalus,  and  of  Chayyug  and  his 
cotemporaries  in  the  tenth  century,  were  due  to  a 
necessary  knowledge  in  the  one  case  of  Accadian, 
and  in  the  other  of  Arabic;  and  it  is  very 
possible  that  the  Sanskrit  grammarians  were 
excited  to  their  work  by  the  native  dialects,  which 
had  been  quickened  into  activity  and  raised  to  the 
level  of  respectability  by  the  spread  of  Buddhism. 
The  elaboration  of  a  methodical  £ranimar  brought 
about  a  more  definite  treatment  of  those  specu- 
lations into  the  nature  of  language  which  had 
before   been   current.       With   a    system  of  rules 


202      THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE. 

to  which  every  one  was  obliged  to  conform,  the 
belief  in  the  conventional  origin  of  grammar 
became  more  and  more  prevalent.  Thus,  in  the 
noun,  the  nominative  was  regarded  as  the  typical, 
fundamental  case,  from  which  the  oblique  cases 
were  so  many  "  fallings,"  casus  (7rrw<jet?),  so 
that  the  whole  internal  relation  of  the  inflected 
noun  became  a  declension.  It  had  declined,  fallen 
off,  from  its  primitive  correct  form  and  meaning. 
In  this  way  a  svstematic  theory  of  the  origin  and 
nature  of  the  cases  was  tacitly  assumed,  which 
fitted  in  well  with  the  philosophic  creed  of  the  last 
century,  when  society  was  explained  by  a  social 
contract  and  religion  by  interested  artifice.  It 
was  easy  enough  to  furnish  an  answer  to  any 
questions  that  might  be  asked  regarding  the 
primary  meaning  of  the  relations  of  grammar : 
the  thoughts  and  feelings  of  the  eighteenth  century 
were  transferred  to  the  first  men,  and  ready  ex- 
planations were  given  in  accordance  with  the 
arbitrary  philosophy  of  each  "  illuminated  "  savan. 
This  d  priori  mode  of  going  to  work,  however,  is 
more  easy  than  satisfactory.  We  have  no  more 
reason  for  accepting  the  opinion  of  one  thinker, 
based  upon  a  hasty  review  of  certain  selected 
phenomena,  than  that  of  another;  what  we  require 
is  the  generalisation  obtained  from  a  conscientious 
a  j)Osteriori  induction  in  accordance  with  the  slow 


THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE.      263 

critical  comparative  method  of  science.  Our 
generalisations,  transcendental  as  they  may  be, 
must  be  the  final  result  of  a  careful  survey  of  all 
the  phenomena  which  are  at  our  disposal.  If  we 
would  get  at  a  settlement  of  the  various  questions 
raised  by  grammar,  such  as  what  is  gender  or 
what  is  declension,  we  must  set  to  work  with  our 
available  materials,  first  reducing  the  different 
parts  of  grammar  into  their  original  form,  so  far 
as  is  possible,  and  then  by  the  help  of  comparison 
determining  what  was  the  meaning  implied  by 
these  original  forms. 

One  point,  however,  we  must  not  overlook. 
The  analysis  of  the  material  is  not  the  same  as 
the  analysis  of  the  mental.  All  that  we  can  do  is 
to  penetrate  to  the  earliest  marks  of,  thought,  the 
most  primitive  utterances  of  society,  and  infer 
from  these  outward  symbols  the  view  of  the  world 
and  the  condition  of  the  mind  which  so  expressed 
itself.  It  is  not  the  symbol  that  we  want  to  dis- 
cover ;  it  is  what  that  symbol  stands  for.  To 
mistake  the  symbol  for  the  symbolised  is  the 
error  of  those  who  would  develop  the  inward  out 
of  the  mechanical,  and  find  a  ready  explanation 
for  the  various  relations  of  grammar  in  the  acci- 
dents of  phonetic  decay.  But  between  the  two 
there  is  a  gulf  which  cannot  be  passed.  The  con- 
ception of  the  dative  case,  for  instance,  was  intel- 


264  THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE. 

lectual,  not  formative,  in  its  origin.  It  was 
evolved  out  of  the  developing  thought,  not  out  of 
an  accidental  difference  of  sounds.  All  that  the 
outward  symbol  can  do  is  to  assist  developing 
thought  by  means  of  association.  The  symbol 
recalls  to  the  mind  a  certain  idea,  and  the  like- 
ness between  two  symbols  will  suggest  a  likeness 
between  the  two  ideas  which  they  severally  re- 
present. The  Latin  sestertium  was  originally  the 
contracted  genitive  plural  of  sestertius  ;  but  the  ter- 
mination -um  called  up  the  idea  of  a  neuter  nomi- 
native of  the  second  declension,  and  hence  arose 
the  new  substantive  sestertium,  sestertii.  But  no 
previously-unknown  idea  was  struck  out  by  this ; 
the  conception  which  answered  to  the  termina- 
tion um  already  existed,  and  by  the  very  nature  of 
the  case  necessarily  existed.  A  rightly-conducted 
investigation  into  the  metaphysics  of  language 
can  only  lead  us  back  to  the  oldest  symbols  of 
thought ;  the  thought  which  lies  behind  these 
must  be  reached  by  an  application  of  the  general 
principle  of  the  uniformity  of  intellectual  action 
at  all  times  and  in  all  places. 

We  may  take,  by  way  of  illustration,  the  ques- 
tion of  gender.  What,  we  may  ask,  was  the  source 
and  primary  signification  of  the  sexual  relation  of 
nouns  ?  It  cannot  have  been  a  primitive  neces- 
sity of  speech,   since  there  are  many  languages 


THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE.      26  5 

which  altogether  want  it ;  and  some  of  these,  like 
the   Chinese  or  the  Accadian,  belonged  to   races 
that    have    taken    high    rank    in    the    history   of 
civilisation.       The  theory,   therefore,   that  would 
account   for   gender  by   assuming   that   our   first 
ancestors  so  far  confused  subject  and  object  as  to 
impose  the  conditions  of  the  former  on  the  .latter, 
fails   to   satisfy  all  the  facts.     Besides,  this  con- 
fusion   lay    not  so   much  upon  the    side   of  the 
subject  as  upon  that  of  the  object ;  the  primitive 
savage  was  overpowered  by  outward  nature,  and 
immersed,  as  it  were,  in  nature,  not  the  converse. 
The    objective    case    of  the    personal   pronoun  is 
older  than  the  subjective ;   indeed,  the  subjective 
element    in    human  consciousness   and   speech   is 
only  slowly  and  gradually  evolved.    Even  in  fetich- 
ism,    the    object    retains    all    its    characteristics, 
the  subject  merely  imparting  to   it  the  vaguest 
possession    of  power  ;  and   the    worship  of  dead 
ancestors   is    far  from  being  a  step  in  advance. 
Gender  could  only   originate,    according    to    the 
theory,  in  the  transference  of  the  characteristics 
of  the  subject  to  the  object,  and  this  implies  at 
once   awakened   consciousness    and  quick    imagi- 
nation.     In  this  case,  however,  we  should  expect 
to  find  the  existence  of  genders  rather  among  the 
pioneers   of  Asiatic  civilisation   than   among  the 
rude  forefathers  of  the  Slavonic  tribes.     The  theory 


266      THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE. 

fares  the  usual  fate  of  d  priori  attempts  at  explan- 
ation ;  and  Grimm's  suggestion,  that  gender  was 
a  kind  of  delicate  insight  into  the  distinction 
between  things,  has  no  better  fortune.  In  actual 
fact,  we  do  not  find  any  delicate  insight  into 
nature  in  the  modern  barbarian ;  and  the  endea- 
vour to  explain  the  phenomena  of  language  as 
the  results  of  spontaneous  growth  and  instinc- 
tive apprehension  is  nothing  more  than  to  state 
the  problem  in  new  words.  All  such  unverified 
hypotheses  are  shipwrecked  at  once  as  soon  as  we 
consider  that,  whereas  there  are  three  genders  in 
the  Aryan  group,  and  eight  in  the  Naina  Hotten- 
tot dialect,  Semitic  and  old  Egyptian  have  but 
two,  while  what  Bleek  calls  the  prefix-pronominal 
languages  of  South  Africa  possess  a  large  number 
of  genders,  in  one  instance  as  many  as  eighteen. 
This  curious  circumstance  gives  us  the  clue  to  the 
origin  of  gender,  and  Bleek  has  accordingly  put 
forward  a  theory  which  is  based  upon  an  inductive 
comparison  of  phenomena,  and  fully  accounts  for 
all  the  known  facts.1  He  believes  that  the  nouns, 
when  combined  with  pronominal  suffixes,  which 
were  originally  nothing  more  than  explanatory 
substantives,    could  be   replaced   by  their   corre- 

1  See  his  paper  on  u  Concord,  the  Origin  of  the  Pronouns,  and 
the  Formation  of  Classes  or  Genders  of  Nouns,"  in  the  Journal  of 
the  A?Uhropo1ogical  Institute,  i.  1872. 


THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE.      267 

sponding  pronouns,  and  these  determined  what  we 
call  the  gender.  Thus,  masculine,  feminine,  and 
neuter  were  primarily  only  so  many  different  pro- 
nouns, each  of  which  appropriated  a  class  of  sub- 
stantives that  custom  had  amalgamated  with  the 
same,  or  allied,  pronominal  suffixes.  The  prefix- 
pronominal  languages  of  Africa  admitted  a  larger 
number  of  combined  and  separate  pronouns  than 
the  Aryan  group,  and  consequently  the  number  of 
genders  possessed  by  them  is  larger  than  is  the 
case  with  our  European  dialects,  Kafir  having  no 
less  than  thirteen  classes  of  nouns,  and  one  dialect 
as  many  as  eighteen.  In  the  Semitic  verbs,  a 
difference  of  gender  is  plainly  expressed  by  a 
difference  in  the  constitutive  pronouns,  as  may 
be  illustrated  by  such  examples  as  the  Ethiopic 
gabar-ca,  gabar-ci,  "  thou  art  strong,"  masculine 
and  feminine,  or  the  Hebrew  U  dhal-tem,  k'dkal-ten, 
"  ye  are  killing;  "  and  the  absence  of  gender  in 
the  agglutinative  and  isolating  languages,  which 
do  not  make  use  of  formative  pronominal  suffixes, 
may  be  accounted  for  by  the  want  of  these  deriva- 
tive elements.  Indeed,  the  exceptions  to  this  which 
have  been  detected  in  a  few  of  these  languages  by 
Castren  and  Schott  unmistakably  confirm  such  a 
view.  A  feminine  ending  in  -a  occurs  among  the 
Kottes,  and  another  in  -m  among  the  Yenisei- 
Ostiaks    (among   whom    also  fun,    "  daughter," 


268      THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE. 

stands  by  the  side  of  /tip,  "son").  Now  this  -a 
or  -m  is  simply  am,  "mother,"  just  as  in  Accadian 
"  daughter"  was  denoted  by  sal-tur,  literally 
"  woman-son."  So  in  Tibetan  the  masculine  ter- 
mination -pa,  -po,  -pho>  -bo,  is  the  word  which 
means  "  father,"  and  the  feminine  suffix  -ma  or 
-mo  is  "  mother."  1  In  these  cases  the  primitive 
substantives  have  not  yet  become  mere  pronom- 
inal suffixes.  Such,  however,  must  have  been  the 
origin  of  all  these  suffixes,  for  even  in  the  Aryan 
family  the  theory  of  pronominal  roots  rests  on  a 
foundation  of  sand. 

Upon  the  hypothesis,  however,  as  Bleek  puts  it 
forward,  two  cases  formed  with  different  pronom- 
inal elements  like  the  nominative  and  accusative 
would  require  to  be  assigned  to  two  different 
genders.  Moreover,  we  should  expect  the  Aryan 
verbs  as  well  as  the  Semitic  to  exhibit  a  distinc- 
tion of  gender,  and  the  Turanian  idioms  ought  to 
distinguish  to  some  extent  between  the  personal 
pronouns,  however  genderless  their  substantives 
may  be.  Man  and  woman,  for  instance,  or  animate 
and  inanimate,  ought  not  to  be  represented  by  one 
and  the  same  personal  pronoun,  any  more  than 
the  first  personal  pronoun  in  Semitic  by  the  same 

1  In  the  Soporian  dialects  of  America,  gender  can  only  be  de- 
noted by  the  addition  of  words  which  signify  "  man  "  and  "  woman  " 
(Buschmann,  Abhandlung.  d.  Berlin.  Akademie,  1869,  i.  103). 


THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE.      269 

form.1  This  is  all  the  more  requisite,  in  so  far  as 
these  pronouns  are  old  forgotten  nouns.  Bleek's 
theory,  therefore,  must  be  modified :  satisfactory 
as  it  is  in  its  main  features,  I  should  prefer  to 
state  it  in  the  following  way  : — Out  of  the  endless 
variety  of  words  that  might  have  been  set  apart  to 
denote  the  personal  and  demonstrative  pronouns, 
common  use  selected  a  certain  number  :  each  of 
these,,  through  habit,  euphony,  or  affinity  of  sense 
or  sound,  was  associated  with  an  ever-increasingly 
specified  class  of  nouns,  and  where  the  pronouns 
continued  different,  the  classes  of  substantives 
connected  with  them  continued  different  also. 
Thus  in  Zulu  the  pronominal  hi  has  ceased  to 
have  any  meaning  of  its  own  ;  but  it  is  employed 
to  form  abstracts  such  as  u-bu-kosi,  "  a  kingdom," 
and  may  be  used  alone  like  a  pronoun  to  represent 
these,  just  as  though  we  were  to  use  dom  to 
represent  the  whole  class  of  words  with  which 
dom  (e.g.)  kingdom)  is  compounded,  saying,  for 
instance,  "the  dom  of  England."  The  classes  of 
nouns  so  created  perpetually  tended  to  become 
more  defined  and  numerous.  The  Aryan  languages 
rarely  show  us  that  uncertain  wavering  between 

1  The  Haussa  has  developed  a  distinction  between  the  genders  of 
this  pronoun.  Besides  ha  and  hi  for  the  second  person,  and  shi, 
ya,  sa,  for  "he,"  "him,"  ta,  ita,  tai,  "she,"  "her,"  we  have  ma 
masculine,  and  nia  and  ta  feminine,  for  "I"  and  "me"  (Schon, 
Vocab.  of  Haussa  Lang.,  p.  13). 


270      THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE. 

two  genders,  that  is,  the  substitution  of  two  differ- 
ent pronouns,  which  we  so  often  find  in  Semitic ; 
and  where  the  majority  of  words  with  a  common 
termination  were  of  a  certain  gender,  all  other 
words  with  the  same  ending  were  referred  to  the 
same  gender.  "We  see  the  process  arrested  in  an 
early  stage  of  growth  in  such  idioms  as  the  Moxa 
and  Abiponian,  in  which  a  large  number  of 
common  words  have  inseparable  pronoun  prefixes 
not  unlike  the  Hebrew  use  of  "OTN,  or  the  (Taic) 
Kuki  numeral  affix  ha  and  prefix  pa.  Indeed, 
these  numeral  suffixes  can  be  shown  to  have  the 
same  origin  and  intention  as  the  pronominal  suf- 
fixes of  South  Africa,  although  the  final  result  of 
creating  classes  of  nouns  distinguished  by  what 
we  call  gender  has  not  been  so  perfectly  attained. 
Thus,  in  Burmese,  the  numeral  termination  changes 
according  to  the  object  numbered,  "  two  men  " 
beiug  lu  nhit-yauk ;  "  two  fowls,"  kyet  nhit-gaung  ; 
"  two  pagodas,"  tsadi  nhit-chu ;  in  Mikir,  bang 
is  prefixed  when  individuals  are  enumerated,  jon 
when  inferior  animals,  hong  and  pap  when  inani- 
mate objects  ;  and  in  Malay,  c/cor,  "  tail,"  has  to  be 
added  to  the  numeral  whenever  cattle  are  spoke u 
of,  as  sa-chor  hcrra,  instead  of  sa  hcrra,  "  one 
monkey."  Farther  advanced  on  the  road  to 
gender  is  the  phenomenon  that  meets  us  in  the 
Tshetsh  language  in  the  Caucasus,  where   adjec- 


THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE.       271 

tives  and  the  substantive  verb  change  their  initial 
letter  after  certain  substantives  :  e.g.^hatxleen  wa 
means  "the  prophet  is ; "  hatxleen  ba,  "  the  prophets 
are;"  waso  wa,  "  the  brother  is; "  wasar  ba,  "  the 
brothers  are."  *  The  change  here  must  be  ascribed 
to  the  attempt  to  substitute  for  class-grouping  by 
the  help  of  independent  suffixed  words,  class- 
grouping  by  means  of  phonetic  distinction  only  ; 
sound  rather  than  sense  has  been  the  principle 
at  work.  We  find  the  same  mode  of  procedure 
in  the  Wolof  article,  the  initial  of  which  has  to  be 
altered  so  as  to  correspond  with  whatever  is  the 
first  consonant  of  its  noun.  Possibly,  the  way  to 
this  was  led  by  the  use  as  articles  of  various 
separate  substantives  which  began  with  different 
letters ;  and  when  once  the  ear  had  become 
accustomed  to  a  consonantal  harmony  between 
the  article  and  the  majority  of  nouns  to  which  it 
was  joined,  and  the  original  independent  meaning 
of  the  words  employed  for  it  had  been  forgotten, 
nothing  would  have  been  easier  than  to  extend 
the  harmony  to  all  instances,  and  establish  the 
general  rule  that  the  article  and  its  noun  must 
commence  with  the  same  consonant.  Such,  at 
least,  was  the  case  on  a  small  scale  in  old  Egyp- 
tian. Here  the  sign  of  the  feminine  was  the 
affixed  t,  the  universal  Semitic  feminine  ending. 

1  See  Shiefuer's  M  Versuch  liber  die  Thusch-Sprache." 


272      THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE. 

When  the  definite  article  in  the  singular  was  used 
with  this,  it  required  the  form  ta — plainly  a  repe- 
tition of  itself — in  place  of  the  masculine  form 
pa.  This  change  of  form  is  what  we  call  gender  ; 
whereas  it  was  really  an  attempt  to  mark  out  the 
substantive  more  definitely  by  guarding  it,  as  it 
were,  with  the  same  suffixed  noun  set  at  the  be- 
ginning and  at  the  end.  It  was  thus  separated 
from  the  rest  of  the  sentence,  and  proved  the  yet 
living  consciousness  of  the  origin  and  force  of  the 
feminine  termination.  Gender,  consequently,  is 
by  no  means  engrained  in  the  nature  of  things. 
It  is  a  secondary  accident  of  speech,  ornamental, 
perhaps,  from  an  ass  the  tic  point  of  view,  but 
practically  highly  detrimental ;  and  it  is  curious 
that  modern  English  has,  in  this,  as  in  so  much 
else,  gone  back  to  the  simple  beginnings  of  the 
sexual  relations,  and  distinguishes  gender  only  by 
means  of  the  corresponding  pronouns.  It  is  true 
that  the  return  is  but  apparent ;  we  can  never  get 
rid  of  our  intervening  history  ;  and  whereas  gender 
started  from  transferring  the  differences  between 
the  pronouns  to  the  substantives  associated  with 
them,  we  now  transfer  the  inherited  differences  of 
meaning  in  the  substantives  to  their  representa- 
tive pronouns. 

An  examination  of  the  available  data  of  Glotto- 
logy  has  thus  led  us  by  the  d  posteriori  road  to 


THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE.      273 

the  original  conception  which  lies  at  the  bottom 
of  gender.  It  is  meagre  enough,  and  very  unlike 
the  magnificent  poetic  insight  which  d  priori 
theories  have  attributed  to  our  remote  forefathers. 
Let  us  now  see  whether  we  can  ascertain,  by  a 
similar  method  of  procedure,  what  was  the  germ- 
inal notion  that  has  resulted  in  the  formation  of 
a  plural  number.  Nothing  seems  to  us  more 
natural,  nay,  more  necessary,  than  the  existence  of 
the  plural ;  we  might  suppose  that  its  roots  go 
deep  down  into  the  very  beginniugs  of  language ; 
and  yet  there  are  two  facts  which  militate  most 
clearly  and  decisively  against  such  an  opiniou. 
The  first  fact  is  the  extended  employment  of  a 
dual.  All  over  the  globe,  in  Aryan,  in  Semitic, 
in  Turanian,  in  Hottentot,  in  Australian,  we  meet 
with  a  dual  both  in  the  substantives  and  in  the 
verbs,  though  the  dual  becomes  more  and  more 
disused  with  the  progress  of  culture  and  the  in- 
creased use  of  the  plural.  Now,  it  is  plain  that 
there  must  have  been  a  very  good  reason  for  this 
dual,  which  seems  to  us  so  utterly  superfluous, 
and  it  is  also  evident  that  there  was  a  time  when 
the  idea  of  plurality  did  not  comprehend  the  idea 
of  duality  as  well;  and  yet,  "two"  is  the  first 
plural  conception  to  which  we  can  attain.  The 
second  fact  to  which  I  have  alluded  is  the  later 
formation  of  the    numbers  after    "  two,"  in    so 

s 


274      THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE. 

many  languages.      In  our  own  Aryan  group,  three, 
tres,  tri,  has  the   same  root  as  the  Latin  trans, 
our  through,  Sanskrit   tar-dmi,  and  simply  means 
"  going  beyond."     Our  earliest  predecessors,  ac- 
cordingly, must   have   exhausted   their   power  of 
definite  numeration  at  "  two,"  and  have  regarded 
all  beyond  that  as  a  vague,  indefinite,  and  there- 
fore unintelligible  series.     Observation  of  actually 
existing  savage  races  affords  abundant  illustration 
of  this.      The  aborigines  of  Victoria,  according  to 
Mr    Stanbridge,    "  have    no    name    for    numerals 
above  two ;  "  1  the  Paris   of    South  America  call 
"  three"  prica  or  "  many  ;  "  and  "  the  new  Hol- 
landers," says  Mr  Oldfield  (of  the  western  tribes), 
"  have    no    names    for    numbers    beyond    t?vo." 2 
Some  of  these,  it  is  true,  can  now  count  on  their 
fingers  as  high  as  "  five,"  or  even  higher  ;  but  the 
acquisition  of  this  power  has  been  too  recent  to 
have  impressed  itself  as  yet  upon  the  language. 
All  this  goes  to  show  that  the  conception  of  plu- 
rality was  not  part  of  the  primary  stock-in-trade 
of  mankind,  and  that  the  plural  was  preceded  by 
the  dual.     Other  facts  may  be  added  in  support  of 
this.      The  group  of  African  languages  which  are 
termed  Khamitic  by  M.  d'Abbadie  want  a  plural 

i  Transactions  of  Ethnological  Society,  i.  304. 

-  Quoted   in   Mr   Tylor'a  instructive   chapter  on  "  The  Art  of 

Counting,"  in  "Primitive  Culture,"  vol.  i.  pp.  21S-4t3. 


THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE.      275 

in  the  substantives  altogether ;  and  the  Amara 
can  only  say  furusn  ayuhu,  "  I  have  seen  horse," 
leaving  it  to  a  future  question  to  decide  whether 
horse  is  one  or  many.1  In  Accadian,  again,  the 
pronoun  hi  is  indifferently  "  he"  and  "  they;"  and 
as  the  formative  affixes  are  appended  to  the  whole 
series  of  words  to  which  they  refer,  the  plural  sign 
is  attached  to  the  adjective  only  when  an  adjective 
is  conjoined  with  a  substantive,  as  in  dimir  galgal- 
ene,  "  the  great  gods,"  dimirri-ene  being  "  gods  ' 
when  used  alone.2  In  the  case  of  the  Khamitic 
idioms,  it  is  difficult  to  ascribe  the  want  of  a 
plural  to  phonetic  decay,  as  in  our  own  "  sheep," 
since  the  defect  extends  throughout  the  nouns  ; 
much  less  to  the  influence  of  Semitic  neighbours 


1  In  the  Sonorian  languages  of  America,  according  to  Busckmann 
(" Abhandlungen  d.  Berliner  Akad.,"  1869,  i.  122),  "the  simple 
word  in  the  singular  serves  also  for  the  plural."  This  is  the  most 
customary  usage  of  the  Cahita,  where  mama  means  "hand"  and 
"hands;"  oou,  "man"  and  "men."  Similarly  in  Tepeguana, 
novi  is  "  hand  "  and  "  hands  ;  "  yuyupa,  "  star  "  and  "  stars."  So, 
too,  Gallatin  ("Trans,  of  the  Amer.  Ethnol.  Soc,"  i.  p.  287)  says 
of  the  monosyllabic  Othomi,  that  its  nouns  are  altogether  inde- 
clinable. The  plural  is  generally  distinguished  from  the  singular 
by  the  prefixed  article,  na  in  the  singular,  ya  in  the  plural  ;  both 
being  our  article  "  the."  Te  means  "  hand  ;  "  na  ye  "  the  hand," 
ya  ye,  "the  hands."  The  plural  is  also  sometimes  expressed  by 
substituting  the  particle  e  for  ya" 

2  M.  d'Abbadie  has  drawn  my  attention  to  the  fact  that  this  is 
exactly  paralleled  by  the  Basque  yaun  handi-ek  ("  the  great  lords  "), 
"the  adjective  being  likewise  postfixed,  and  taking  up  alone  the 
plural  article  (ah)." 


276      THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE. 

who  had  substituted  collectives,  or  broken  plurals 
as  they  are  commonly  called,  for  the  original  plural 
forms.  A  slight  advance  upon  this  utter  power- 
lessness  of  passing  beyond  the  singular  in  thought 
is  the  formation  of  the  plural  of  the  personal  pro- 
nouns in  the  Tumali  of  Africa.  Here  the  pronouns 
ngi,  "  I,"  ngO)  "  thou,"  and  ngu,  "he,"  which  are 
distinguished  from  one  another  only  by  a  modifi- 
cation of  the  vowel,  are  changed  into  plurals  by  the 
addition  of  the  postposition  da,  u  with."  Hence  we 
get  ngi-n-de,  a  we,"  ngo-n-da,  "  ye,"  and  nge-n-da, 
"  they."  It  will  be  noticed  that  phenomena  which 
approach  inflection  are  met  with  here,  in  the  inser- 
tion of  the  fulcrum  nasal  and  the  vocalic  mutation 
in  the  first  and  third  persons  ;  but  there  is  still  no 
clear  consciousness  of  anything  except  the  singular 
number :  the  second  factor,  which  ought  to  be 
coupled  by  the  postposition,  is  left  a  mere  blank, 
reminding  us  of  those  savage  tribes  who  can  only 
denote  the  relations  of  the  verb  by  accompanying 
a  word  with  significant  gestures.  But  not  only  do 
we  meet  with  languages  which  do  not  possess  any 
plural  forms,  we  also  find  many  others  in  which 
the  formal  expression  of  plurality  has  never  passed 
beyond  that  of  dualism.  In  the  language  of  the 
Bushmen,  the  plurals  are  throughout  formed  by 
reduplication ;  and  this  is  but  one  way  of  sav- 
ins' that  the  doubling:  of  a  thing  is  the  furthest 


THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE.      277 

point  of  multiplicity  to  which  the  mind  of  the 
speaker  can  attain.  To  repeat  a  word  in  order  to 
express  the  idea  of  more  than  one,  is  to  identify 
plurality  with  duality,  and  to  imply  the  priority  of 
the  latter.  And  nearly  all  our  evidence  makes  for 
the  belief  that  the  formation  of  the  plural  by  this 
means  is  one  of  the  oldest  contrivances  of  lan- 
guage. Thus  the  Accadian  was  still  able  to  form 
plurals  in  this  way,  as  in  khar-kkar  by  the  side  of 
kkarrine,  "  hollows,"  though  he  preferred  to  do  so 
by  the  help  of  the  postfixes  mes  ("  many  ")  and  ene. 
Canarese  even  now  makes  use  of  reduplication  to 
create  collectives,  and  the  Basque  preposition  zaz 
shows  traces  of  the  same  process ;  so  in  Malay 
raja-raja  is  "princes,"  and  orang-orang,  "  people."1 
The  idea  of  the  superlative,  as  an  intensification  and 
increase  of  the  visible  individual  qualities,  cannot  be 


1  The  Tepeguana  uses  several  kinds  of  reduplication  to  express 
the  plural.  (1.)  The  simple  word  is  doubled,  as  in  du,  "mother," 
pi.  "  dtiddu;"  qui,  "  house,"  pi.  "  quiqui"  (2.)  The  first  syllable 
only  is  repeated,  as  in  naxa,  "ear,"  pi.  nanaxa ;  tara,  "foot," 
pi.  tatara.  (3.)  This  repetition  is  accompanied  by  a  change  of  the 
consonant,  as  in  buy  or  vui,  "eye,"  pi.  vupui ;  voca,  "stomach," 
pi.  voppoca.  (4.)  An  initial  vowel  is  reduplicated,  as  in  cdi,  ' '  child," 
pi.  aali ;  ogga,  "father,"  pi.  oogga ;  ubi,  "woman,"  pi.  uubi.  (5.) 
The  second  syllable  of  the  word  is  doubled,  as  in  alguli,  "  boy,"  pi. 
aligugidi;  mavidi,  "lion,"  pi.  mavipidi.  (6.)  A  vowel  in  the  middle 
of  the  word  is  repeated,  as  in  him,  "gourd,"  pi.  hiim ;  gogosi, 
"  dog,"  pi.  googosi ;  alali,  "  boy,"  pi.  alaali.  (7.)  A  v  or  b  in  the 
middle  of  a  word  is  changed  into  p — "  an  echo  of  the  reduplica- 
tion,"— as  in  cavaio,  "horse,"  pi.  capaio  (Buschmann,  loc.  cit.) 


278      THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE. 

separated  from  that  of  plurality  ;  and  superlatives 
are  made  by  reduplication  from  the  Mandingo  ding- 
ding,  u  a  very  little  child,"  to  the  Accadian  galgal, 
"  very  great."  It  does  not  appear,  however,  that 
the  specific  conception  of  duality  was  the  one  most 
prominent  in  this  primitive  expedient  of  speech. 
When  we  consider  how  often  reduplication  is  used 
simply  to  intensify  the  imitation  of  natural  sounds, 
and  to  denote  their  continuousness,  as  in  the 
Dayak  kakd-kaka,  "  to  go  on  laughing  loud,"  or 
the  Tamil  murii-miiru,  "  to  murmur,"  or  to  express 
the  length  and  continuity  of  an  action,  as  in  the 
reduplicated  Aryan  perfect,  we  are  inclined  to 
believe  that  the  contrivance  of  reduplication  was 
adopted  by  language  before  it  had  arrived  at  a 
clear  idea  of  duality,  and  while  it  was  still  strug- 
gling to  pass  from  the  single  individual  to  a  more 
general  concept.  The  most  obvious  means  of 
expressing  this  vague  endeavour  was  the  repeti- 
tion of  sounds  ;  and  when  once  thought  had  thus 
made  itself  objective  in  articulate  speech,  it  was 
comparatively  easy  to  acquire  a  clear  and  distinct 
conception  of  duality  and  separation.  Before  this, 
all  beyond  one  would  have  presented  itself  as  a 
misty  and  indefinite  repetition  of  one.  In  this 
case  reduplicated  plurals  would  once  have  repre- 
sented, not  merely  an  indistinct  amplification  of 
the  individual,  but  a  definite  idea  of  two  indivi- 


THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE.      279 

duals,  and  the  further  extension  of  this  to  denote 
the  plural  only  shows  the  poverty  of  invention 
among  those  races  who  have  retained  the  primitive 
dual  form  to  express  the  plural. 

In  some  of  the  North  American  languages  we 
may  actually  see  the  process  going  on,  whereby  the 
conception  of  duality,  when  once  clearly  denned, 
extended  itself  to  that  of  plurality.  In  Cherokee, 
the  dual  of  the  first  person  is  divided  into  two, 
the  first  of  which  is  used  when  one  of  two  persons 
speaks  to  the  other ;  the  second,  when  the  one  speaks 
of  the  other  to  a  third.  Thus  inaluika  is  "we  two 
(i.e.,  thou  and  I)  are  tying  it;  "  arcstaluiha,  "  we 
two  (i.e.,  he  and  I)  are  tying  it."  Here  the  idea 
of  the  limitation  of  the  dual  on  the  side  of 
plurality  has  been  distinctly  attained.  The  pro- 
cess is  to  be  observed  still  more  plainly  in  the  Papuan 
dialects,  in  which  the  personal  pronouns  possess 
not  only  a  trinal  form,  but  also  exclusive  and 
inclusive  forms.  In  Annatom,  for  instance,  ainyak 
is  "  I ;  "  akaijan,  "you  two  +  I ;  "  ajumrau,  "  you 
two  —  I;  "  akataij,  "  you  three  +  I,"  aijumtaij, 
"  you  three  —  I;  "  akaija,  "  you  +  I ;  "  aijama, 
"  you  —  I."  So  in  Mallicollo,  inau  is  "  I ; "  khai- 
im  "  you,"  and  na-ii,  "  he,"  while  na-muhl  is  "  we 
two,  exclusive  of  others ; "  drivan,  "  we  two, 
inclusive  of  others  ;  "  kka-muhl,  "  you  two;  "  na- 
tarsi,  "you  three;"  dra-tin,  "we  three;"  and  the' 


280      THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE. 

specification  of  number  actually  rises  as  high  as 
four,  na-tavatz  being  "you  four,"  and  dra-tovatz, 
"  we  four."  It  is  difficult  to  understand  how  a 
people  could  have  reached  the  point  of  setting  apart 
a  special  form  to  denote  the  number  four,  and 
should  yet  have  not  made  what  seems  so  short 
a  step  in  advance,  and  attained  the  notion  of  plu- 
rality. The  abstracting  and  generalising  faculty 
was  wanting,  and  the  speaker  was  still  unable  to 
get  beyond  the  individual  object  of  sense.  It  is 
evident,  however,  that  tovatz  or  tatatz  must  be 
merely  the  numeral  "  four,"  which  is  tacked  on  to 
the  singular  personal  pronoun,  just  as  in  the  Taic 
languages  a  plural  numeral  is  attached  to  a  singular 
noun ;  the  Burmese  hi  nhit-yauk,  "  two  men,"  for 
example,  meaning  literally  "man  two."  Perhaps 
we  may  compare  our  own  "  ten  foot,"  "  ten  stone," 
like  the  Hebrew  use  of  the  tens  from  20  to  90 
with  the  singular,  as  in  'esrim  9ir}  "  twenty  cities  ;  " 
or  the  employment  of  collectives,  which  may  be 
regarded,  from  one  point  of  view,  as  a  survival  of 
the  inability  of  primitive  man  to  conceive  the 
plural.  The  collective  sums  up  under  a  single 
head  the  idea  of  plurality,  and  thus  embodies  the 
last  result  of  generalisation  and  classification  ; 
whereas  the  primeval  noun,  like  the  primeval  sen- 
tence, was  unable  to  reach  the  simplest  classifi- 
cation,   and   so   was    obliged   to   enumerate  each 


THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE.  281 

separate  individual,  although,  owing  to  this  very 
incapacity  to  generalise,  the  universal  lay  implicit 
in  the  noun,  waiting  to  be  developed  out  of  it  when 
the  time  came.  We  cannot  correctly  call  it  a 
singular,  because  there  was  no  plural :  no  sin- 
gular existed  until  the  idea  of  a  dual  was  struck 
out. 

We  may  even  call  in  the  aid  of  a  priori  argu- 
ments, whatever  these  may  be  worth,  in  support  of 
the  view  that  the  dual  is  older  than  the  plural.  So 
long  as  men  lived  in  the  primeval  beehive  commu- 
nity, there  was  no  need  of  any  clear  expression  of 
multiplicity.  As  the  individual,  however,  emerged 
from  this  early  state,  he  would  arrive  at  more  defi- 
nite ideas  of  number  ;  one  necessarily  implies  two, 
and  the  immediate  wants  of  a  savage  life  would  often 
require  the  employment  of  language.  But  these 
wants  were  circumscribed,  and  the  primitive  bar- 
barian, like  modern  savages,  would  have  been 
extremely  chary  in  his  use  of  words.  His  simple 
necessities  would  easily  be  satisfied  by  a  single 
neighbour  ;  and  time  would  elapse  before  the  iso- 
lated nomad  came  to  mix  freely  with  a  large  circle 
of  human  beings.  Primarily,  therefore,  his  re- 
quests would  be  addressed  to  one  other  person  only, 
and  the  dual  accordingly  would  suffice  for  all  his 
wants.  Consequently  we  are  not  astonished  at 
finding  that  an  analysis  of  the   pronouns  teaches 


282      THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE. 

us  that  the  Aryan  plural  asma  is  compounded  of 
ma  -f  sma,  "  I  and  he,"  and  not  "  I  and  they," 
tusma  (whence  Sanskrit  yuskma,  with  the  insertion 
of  the  semi-vowel  and  the  subsequent  loss  of  the 
dental)  being  similarly  "  thou  and  he."  In  this 
way,  moreover,  we  can  alone  account  for  the 
existence  and  persistency  of  a  dual,  which  seems 
so  superfluous  by  the  side  of  a  plural :  with  the 
latter  already  in  use  it  is  hard  to  understand  the 
elaboration  of  the  former. 

The  priority  of  the  dual,  however,  is  contrary  to 
the  opinion  which  makes  the  dual  in  Aryan  and 
Semitic  merely  a  lengthened  form  of  the  plural. 
The  Aryan  plural  is  formed  by  a  postfixed  s,  which 
has  been  compared  with  the  preposition  sam,  sa/td 
and  the  s  of  the  singular  nominative  and  genitive, 
as  if  there  were  any  compatibility  between  these, 
or  no  difference  between  a  preposition  and  a  post- 
position. Now  it  is  no  doubt  tempting  to  regard 
the  dual  as  an  amplification  of  the  plural  forms  ; 
but  a  few  words  will  show  clearly  how  improbable 
this  really  is.  In  the  first  place,  the  assumption 
of  an  uniform  plural  in  s  in  the  parent  speech 
cannot  be  sustained  by  the  side  of  the  second 
declension  in  Greek  and  Latin,  or  of  neuter  bases 
in  i  and  u  in  Sanskrit,  where  the  nominatives  do 
not  exhibit  any  vestiges  of  an  original  sibilant. 
Then,  secondly,  however  easy  it  may  be  to  get  the 


THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE.  283 

dual  sds  out  of  the  plural  sas,  it  is  absolutely 
impossible  to  get  at  once  sds  and  aus  out  of  ams, 
the  old  accusative  plural,  and  sdms,  the  genitive 
plural.  Moreover,  we  may  ask  what  warrant  we 
have  for  postulating  the  change  of  m  into  v  and  u 
in  the  parent  Aryan  ?  So  far  as  our  data  go,  it 
is  unheard  of.  And  if  we  grant  the  possibility  of 
a  transformation  of  sdms  into  aus,  how  comes 
swds,  the  conjectural  pattern-form  of  the  plural 
locative,  also  to  become  aus?  This,  indeed,  is  to 
presuppose  the  desperate  expedient  of  a  metathesis, 
which  is  contra-indicated  by  the  usual  loss  of  the 
final  syllable  in  the  Sanskrit  -su.  But  the  last 
difficulty  is  the  greatest  of  all.  The  dative  and 
ablative  plural  in  -bhyams  may  readily  become 
bhydms  in  the  dual ;  but  unfortunately  the  instru- 
mental dual  has  exactly  the  same  form,  while 
the  instrumental  plural,  though  derived  from  the 
same  formative,  bid,  is  not  bhyams,  but  bhis.  The 
most  stout-hearted  philologist  will  find  it  hard  to 
extract  the  same  phonetic  result  out  of  a  length- 
ening of  bhyams  and  bhis.  The  fact,  however, 
suggests  another  explanation.  It  is  undeniable 
that  bhydms  and  bhyams,  whence  come  the 
Sanskrit  -bhyas,  the  Latin  -bus,  the  Gothic  -m 
and  the  old  Norse  -um,  are  closely  connected  with 
one  another;  but  both,  as  has  been  said  in  a 
former  chapter,  are  derived  from  the  post-prepo- 


284      THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE. 

sition  Mi,1  and  must  have  been  applied  to  their 
present  purpose  during  the  period  which  falls  within 
the  province  of  Glottology ;  consequently  they  do 
not  belong  to  the  original  flection  of  the  Aryan 
noun.  Bids  is  also  taken  from  the  same  indepen- 
dent root,  and  it  is  very  probable  that  both  bhyams 
and  bids  existed  as  separate  plurals,  the  first  as 
an  accusative,  and  the  second  as  a  locative  (for 
bldns),  before  they  were  attached  to  other  vocables.2 
We  are  here  dealing  with  an  instance  that  is  alto- 
gether different  from  that  of  flection  proper,  where 
the  inflections  cannot  be  separated  from  the  noun 
in  which  they  inhere,  and  show  no  signs  of  having 
ever  been  independent  roots.  Now  if  bhyams 
forms  the  dative,  ablative,  and  instrumental  in  the 
dual,  while  bhyams  performs  this  office  only  for  the 
dative  and  the  ablative  in  the  plural,  the  instru- 
mental being  denoted  by  bids,  the  simplest  mode 
of  explaining  the  relation  of  the  two  is  to  assume 
the  prior  existence  of  the  dual,  the  plural  not 
coming  into  general  use  before  a  further  differen- 
tiation of  cases  had  taken  place.  When  the  plural  of 
these  cases  first  became  fixed,  the  instrumental  had 
already  been  separated  off  from  the  dative  and  the 
ablative.     Why  the  vowel  of  the  dual  should  be 

1  Abhi  would  be  the  instrumental  of  an  old  noun,  a  or  d. 

-  This  is  indicated  in  the  Rig- Veda  by  the  non-operation  of  the 
laws  of  Sandhi  as  in  the  instrumental  marut  bhis  instead  of  marud- 
bhis.     See,  however,  Appendix  II. 


THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE.      285 

longer  than  that  of  the  plural  may  perhaps  be  learned 
from  a  consideration  of  the  Semitic  languages.  In 
these,  while  the  Hebrew  plural  was  -Im  (from  -ani), 
the  Aramaic  -in,  and  the  Arabic  -una,  the  dual  in 
these  dialects  was  respectively  -dim,  -ain,  and  -drd  or 
-aini.  So,  too,  in  Assyrian,  the  dual  ended  in  -a, 
the  usual  masculine  plural  being  in  -i.  Now  a 
comparison  of  the  Semitic  languages  leads  us  to  the 
conclusion  that  the  plural  primarily  terminated  in 
-amu,  so  that  the  original  dual  was  probably  -cCamu, 
which  expressed  the  reduplication  of  the  object  by 
the  long-continued  repetition  of  the  pure  primary 
vowel.  A  close  analogy  to  this  may  be  found  in  the 
idiom  of  the  Aponegricans,  in  which  "  six  "  is  ita- 
rcuna,  and  "  seven"  itawu-u-una:  the  same  principle 
is  at  work  in  the  extension  of  ouatou,  "  a  stream," 
among  the  Botocudos  of  Brazil,  into  ouatou-ou-ou- 
ou,  "  ocean,"  or  the  Madagascar  lengthening  of 
ra-a-atchi,  "  very  bad,"  from  ratchi  "bad."  If 
the  repetition  of  the  primary  vowel  in  Semitic, 
therefore,  with  the  mimmation  sounded  after  it 
(as  in  the  singular),  was  intended  to  represent 
the  double  character  of  the  object,  the  dual 
would  have  been  formed  upon  the  singular,  not 
upon  the  plural,  and  the  latter  would  rather  be 
a  contraction  of  it,  the  vowel  being  contracted  in 
so  far  as  the  idea  expressed  by  the  plural  was  less 
definite  than  that  expressed  by  the  dual.    The  final 


286      THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE. 

case-ending  -u  would  have  been  copied  from  the 
singular. 

From  the  numbers  we  naturally  pass  on  to  the 
cases.  These,  as  their  name  implies,  are  regarded 
as  so  many  fallings-off  from  the  casus  rectus, 
or  nominative,  which  is  held  to  be  the  typical 
form  of  the  noun.  This  view,  however,  which  is 
really  based  on  the  logical  analysis  of  a  developed 
grammar,  is  not  borne  out  by  scientific  investiga- 
tion. The  "naming"  case  of  the  noun,  whose 
title  to  the  name  of  case  was  itself  disputed,  seems 
after  all  to  be  a  later  addition  to  nominal  declen- 
sion. Everything  seems  to  point  to  the  accusa- 
tive or  objective  case  as  the  most  primitive  form 
of  the  noun.  This  is  clearly  patent  in  Semitic, 
where  the  so-called  case-ending  in  -a  has  been 
retained  in  Ethiopic,  Arabic,  Assyrian,  and  appa- 
rently Hebrew,  to  mark  the  accusative,  the  later 
modifications  of  this  original  sound  having  been 
appropriated  to  create  the  nominative  in  -w  and 
the  genitive  in  -i.  So,  again,  in  Aryan  the  objec- 
tive md,  "  me,"  is  still  found  as  accusative  in 
Sanskrit,  while  its  priority  is  shown,  not  only  by 
the  verbal  termination  in  -mi,  but  yet  more  by 
the  compounded  form  of  the  nominative  Sanskrit 
akam,  Greek  lycov,  Latin  ego,  Gothic  ik.  Whether 
or  not  this  is  made  up  of  ma,  which  has  first  be- 
come va  (as  in  the  dual  and  plural  of  Sanskrit 


THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE.      287 

and  Teutonic),  and  then  been  dropped  altogether, 
and  ya,  an  emphatic  enclitic,  which  has  given  birth 
to  the  Yedic  gha  and  the  Greek  ye,  at  all  events 
ejwv  is  a  less  simple  and  ancient  form  than  fie. 
It  has  been  aptly  remarked,  that  this  is  only  in 
accordance  with  the  ordinary  facts  of  infantile  life. 
The  child  says  "  Charley  does  this  or  that,"  before 
he  learns  to  say  "  I  do  this  or  that."  The  exist- 
ence of  neuters,  the  nominatives  of  which  end  in 
-m,  points  in  the  same  direction.  Here  the  idea  of 
life,  and  therefore  of  subjectivity,  is  put  out  of  sight, 
and  consequently  the  conception  of  objectivity  has 
been  so  fixed  in  them,  that  when  other  classes  of 
things  came  to  be  conceived  as  capable  of  originat- 
ing actions,  and  were  therefore  assigned  a  parti- 
cular flection  when  regarded  in  this  way,  the  neu- 
ters were  relegated  to  a  class  by  themselves,  and 
preserved  the  old  common  termination  for  what 
now  became  divided  into  nominative  and  accusa- 
tive. The  outward  form  kept  up  a  recollection  of 
that  primitive  state  of  things  in  which  man  still 
regarded  himself,  and  all  about  him,  as  objects, 
and  had  not  yet  realised  that  he  was  a  subject, 
and  the  originator  of  action,  still  less  had  pro- 
jected this  power  into  the  objects  about  him. 
The  agglutinative  languages  made  no  distinction 
between  the  nominative  and  accusative,  thus  re- 
flecting, as  in  so  much  else,  the  early  condition  of 
human  intelligence  and  speech. 


288      THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE. 

Next  to  these  cases,  the  most  important  part  of 
the  noun-declension  is  the  genitive.      But  the  re- 
lation which  we  express  by  this  must  originally 
have  been  but  imperfectly,  if  at  all,  comprehended, 
if  we   are  to  judge  fi;om  the  grammatical  pheno- 
mena   of   the   agglutinative    tongues.       Thus    in 
Accadian  the  relation  of  genitive  and  governing 
noun   was   primarily  denoted   merely  by  placing 
the   former  after  the  latter,  as   is   still  the  case 
with  Taic  and  Malay ;  and  it  was  only  gradually 
that  this  simple  method  came  to  be  supplanted  by 
the  suffixing  of  words  like  led,  "  filling,"  and  get, 
u  making,"  to  the  second  noun.     Here,  then,  the 
relation  would  seem  to  be  nothing  more  than  what 
we  term  " apposition,"  that  is,  where  two  indivi- 
dual notions  are  placed  side  by  side  without  any 
further   effort   being  made  by  the  mind  to  deter- 
mine their  exact  relations  beyond  the  mere  fact 
that  one    precedes    the    other,    and     is    therefore 
thought  of  first.     Hence  we  may  say  that  there 
was   a  time  when  the  genitive,   as  such,  did  not 
exist,   and  we  have   to  discover,  as  far  as  is  pos- 
sible,  how  it  came  into  being.     Now  we  are  all 
well  acquainted  with  the  distinction  between  what 
is  called  the  objective  genitive,  where  the  governed 
word  is  the  object  of  the  other  (as  in  amor  Socratis, 
"  love  felt  for  Socrates"),  and  the  subjective  geni- 
tive, where  the  reverse  takes  place  (as  in  Socratis 


THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE.      289 

amor,  "  love  felt  by  Socrates  ").  The  distinction 
corresponds  to  the  difference  made  in  formal  logic 
between  predication  and  inhesion  in  a  proposition, 
the  attribute  being  included  in  the  subject  in  the 
one,  and  including  the  subject  in  the  other.  The 
genitive  relation  can  be  looked  at  under  either  one 
of  these  two  aspects,  and  consequently  we  ought 
not  to  expect  to  find  the  grammatical  relics  of  all 
languages  pointing  to  one  and  the  same  process. 
This  race  preferred  to  conceive  the  relation,  when 
it  had  once  arrived  at  it,  under  the  one  point  of 
view,  that  race  under  another.  The  meaning  of 
the  relation  itself,  however,  was  not  that  of  simple 
dependency,  which  it  has  since  grown  into.  The 
Semite  centred  his  attention  upon  the  governed 
word,  in  agreement  with  that  synthetising  ten- 
dency which  has  displayed  itself  in  his  language, 
his  literature,  and  his  religion.  The  governing 
noun  was  placed  first,  and  its  accent  and  import- 
ance transferred  to  the  following  genitive,  so  that 
the  whole  became  a  kind  of  compound  pronounced 
in  one  breath,  in  which  the  latter  part  alone  had 
prominence  assigned  to  it.  The  so-called  genitive 
termination  in  i7  which  the  second  substantive 
takes  in  Assyrian,  is  but  a  modification  of  the 
accusatival  -a,  and  consequently  goes  back  to  a 
time  when  the  nominative  did  not  exist.  The 
periphrastic  genitive,  which    placed   the   relative 


290  THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE. 

(or  rather  originally  the  demonstrative)  pronoun 
between  the  two  nouns,  analysing  the  genitive 
relation  into  "  love  that  (is)  Sokrates,"  and  so 
equalising  the  two  ideas,  must  be  referred  to  a 
later  period.  The  Aryan  procedure  was  the  exact 
converse  of  the  Semitic,  and  would  suffice  of  itself 
to  demonstrate  the  separate  origin  of  the  two 
groups  of  languages.  Here  the  mind  fixed  all  its 
attention  upon  the  governing  noun,  suitably  to  the 
genius  of  a  race  which  was  eminently  practical, 
and  by  its  close  observation  of  objects  has  been 
the  originator  of  inductive  science.  It  was  the 
governed  noun  the  dependency  of  which  was 
marked  out  by  suffixes,  and  which  naturally  came 
first  in  pronunciation,  thus  directing  the  attention 
to  the  more  important  governing  word,  which  was 
last  heard.  The  mind  was  turned  towards  the 
object,  not  towards  the  source  or  end  of  that 
object.  These,  on  the  contrary,  were  conceived  as 
so  many  attributes,  which  accidentally  adhered  to 
the  principal  object  of  thought.  It  is  the  same  in 
the  pronominal-prefix  idioms  of  South  Africa. 
The  Bii-ntu  genitive  agrees  with  the  gender  of  the 
governing  noun  just  as  much  as  the  genitival 
hrjiio-cno-s  of  the  Greek  must  agree  with  its  sub- 
stantive ;x  thus  in  Zulu,  i-si-fya  s-o-u-fazi,  "  the 

1  So  in  the  Tibetan  languages  adjectives  are  formed  from  sub- 
stantives by  the  addition  of  the  sign  of  the  genitive,  as  ser-gyi,  "  of 


THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE.      291 

dish  of  the  woman."  The  last  instance,  taken  in 
conjunction  with  what  has  been  said  above  upon 
the  origin  of  gender,  will  throw  much  light  upon 
the  primitive  signification  of  the  genitive  relation. 
The  same  pronominal  word  which  has  been  attached 
to  one  substantive  is  attached  to  another  when 
the  idea  expressed  by  the  latter  is  sought  to  be 
brought  into  connection  with  the  idea  expressed 
by  the  first.  If  we  assume  that  the  primary  mean- 
ing of  si  was  "  mass,"  the  words  i-si-tya  s-o-m- 
fazi  would  properly  be  read  "  mass-dish  mass- 
woman."  It  is  but  a  new  application  of  the  old 
law  of  the  syllogism  in  logic,  or  of  the  principle 
which  Mr  H.  Spencer  has  shown  to  be  the  ground 
of  all  science.  Two  things  are  brought  into  con- 
nection and  equivalence  one  with  the  other  by  means 
of  a  third.  In  the  present  case,  two  ideas  were 
first  set  over  against  one  another,  and  expressed 
in  language  in  such  a  way  that  one  of  them  came 
to  be  always  associated  with  the  other,  and  with 
the  ideas  cognate  with  the  latter,  until  it  was 
reduced  at  last  to  a  mere  formative,  constituting-  a 
class ;  and  then  by  the  help  of  this  pronominal 
formative  other  ideas,  not  cognate  with  the  idea 
originally  set  over  against  the  decayed  prefix,  were 

gold,"  "aureus,"  from  ser,  "gold  ;"  and  in  Hindustani  the  geni- 
tive takes  the  marks  of  gender  according  to  the  words  to  which  it 
refers  (Max  Miiller,  Lectures,  1st  series,  p.  106). 


292      THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE. 

united  with  it  in  thought.      In  this  manner  the 
genitive    would   have    grown    out   of   apposition. 
Equipollent  conceptions  could  be  placed  side  by- 
side  in  apposition,  and  one  of  these,  after  being 
crystallised  into  a  grammatical  form,  became  the 
medium  of  combining  new  conceptions  with  the 
conception  with  which  it  was  united.      This,  how- 
ever, could  only  be  the  case  where  the  objective 
genitive  was  the  type  of  the  relation.     Languages 
like  the  Semitic,  in  which  the  subjective  genitive 
was   the  type,  never   rose  beyond   an  apposition 
wherein  the  first  factor  was  subordinated  to  the 
second,  and  consequently  never  possessed  a  true 
genitive,  any  more  than  the  Malay  and  the  Taic 
languages  generally.     The  insertion  of  the   rela- 
tive pronoun  between  the  two  factors,  which  may  be 
made  in  Chinese  by  tchi,  a  word  originally  signi- 
fying "  a  place,"  is  nothing  else  than  an  analysis 
of  the  apposition.     The  agglutinative  plan  of  affix- 
ing a  word  of  independent  meaning  to  the  governed 
noun  is  equally  little  a  genitive  ;    it  is  really  a 
verbal  clause  ;  and  the  Accadian  enu  Huru-lal  may 
just  as  well  be  translated  "  the  lord  fills  Ur,"  as 
"lord  of  Ur"  ("  Ur-filling  "). 

Before  closing  our  list  of  illustrations  of  what  is 
meant  by  the  Metaphysics  of  Language,  it  would 
be  well  to  take  an  example  from  the  verbs.  I 
have  already  tried  to  point  out  in  a  former  chapter 


THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE.       293 

how  a  comparative  study  of  languages  leads  us  to 
the  conclusion  that  the  aorist  is  the  oldest  tense. 
Let  us  now  see  what  we  can  learn  about  the  per- 
son-endings, the  chief  characteristic  of  the  verb 
so  far  as  form  is  concerned.  In  Chinese,  position 
alone  decides  whether  a  word  is  used  as  a  verb,  a 
substantive,  an  adjective,  an  adverb,  or  a  preposi- 
tion. Place  ngdy  "  I"  before  a  root,  and  it  be- 
comes the  first  person  of  a  verb,  just  like  "  I  ride  " 
in  English.  The  form  of  the  language  has  scarcely 
advanced  beyond  the  rudimentary  stage  in  which 
the  distinctions  of  the  several  parts  of  speech  were 
all  unknown,  and  lay  undeveloped  within  the 
embryo  of  a  single  monosyllable.  The  agglutina- 
tive languages  show  further  progress.  Accadian 
can  not  only  say  mu-ac,  "  I  made,"  and  mu~nin- 
aCj  "  I  made  it,"  like  the  Chinese  ngd  reel  and  ngo 
wei  tscki,  but  has  proceeded  to  create  a  present  by 
extendiog  the  last  syllable  of  the  radical,  and  so 
appropriating  to  it  a  special  verbal  form,  just  as  in 
Tibetan  we  get  ngajyed-do,  "  I  do,"  from  jyed,  "  to 
do."  Immense  is  the  advance  from  this  early 
stage  to  such  broken-down  forms  as  the  Basque 
duzu,  "  thou  hast  him  "  (compounded  of  d,  "  him," 
au,  "  have,"  and  zu,  "  thou  "),  or  the  Ostiak  con- 
jugation, where  the  three  persons  of  the  singular  of 
the  first  two  tenses  of  the  indicative  respectively  are 
madddm,  maddn,  madd,  and   maddu,  maddr,  ma- 


294  THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE. 

ddda.  In  all  cases,  however,  we  find  that  the 
forms  resolve  themselves  into  a  combination  of  the 
root  with  the  personal  pronouns,  these  being 
sometimes  affixed  and  sometimes  prefixed.  In 
Accadian,  as  in  Basque,  both  processes  could  take 
place  ;  but  as  a  general  rule  the  Turanian  idioms 
of  Asia  have  remained  true  to  their  instinct  of 
postfixing  the  determinative  words.  It  is  the  same 
in  old  Egyptian  and  with  the  Aryan  verb,  though 
a  difficulty  meets  us  here.  Every  one  can  see  that 
ad-mi,  at-si,  u  I  eat,"  "  thou  eatest,"  go  back  to 
the  two  first  personal  pronouns,  in  spite  of  the 
change  of  the  dental  of  the  second  person  into  a 
sibilant,  and  the  dual  and  plural  forms  -vas,  -thas, 
and  -mas,  -t/ia,  make  this  indubitable.  But  the 
third  person  is  not  so  easy  to  explain,  and  Bleek 
has  even  ventured  to  derive  it  from  a  conjectural 
ti  =:  "  do,"  which  has  made  the  perfect  of  the 
Teutonic  languages.  The  singular  -ti  might  be 
discovered  in  the  demonstrative,  which  has  helped 
in  the  declension  of  the  Sanskrit  third  personal 
pronoun,  but  the  plural,  -nti,  which  cannot  be 
separated  from  it,  still  remains  unaccounted  for. 
The  nasal  cannot  have  been  a  mere  phonetic  in- 
sertion, nor  is  it  likely  that  its  derivation  is  to  be 
sought  in  an  assumed  demonstrative  pronoun  an. 
Whatever  may  be  the  difficulties,  however,  con- 
nected with  the  third  person,  the  first  and  second 


THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE.      295 

persons  of  the  verb  are  unmistakably  to  be  traced 
back  to  the  original  objective  forms  of  the  personal 
pronouns.  But  this  implies  a  time  when  such  a 
combination  did  not  exist,  a  time  when  the  per- 
sonal pronouns  were  not  yet  fossilised  out  of  their 
earlier  general  significations,  and  when  a  verbal 
force  must  have  been  given  to  the  root  in  a  diffe- 
rent manner.  It  is  noticeable  that  in  Accadian 
enu-mu  meant  at  once  "  my  lord"  and  "I  am 
lord,"  and  this  vagueness  of  meaning  implies  a 
very  faint  realisation  of  the  distinction  between  the 
two  principal  parts  of  speech ;  while,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  Japanese  personal  pronouns,  true  to  their 
substantival  origin,  may  be  used  to  denote  all  three 
persons  alike.  Now  here,  as  elsewhere,  the  dialects 
of  savage  tribes  let  us  into  the  secrets  of  early 
language,  and  we  find  that  the  Grebo  of  West 
Africa  can  distinguish  between  "  I "  and  "  thou," 
"we"  and  "  you,"  solely  by  the  intonation  of  the 
voice,  ma  di  being  equally  "I  eat"  and  "thou 
eatest,"  a  di,  "  you"  and  "  we  eat."  Nay,  more 
than  this ;  according  to  the  Rev.  J.  L.  Wilson, 
even  these  pronouns  are  but  rarely  employed  in 
conversation,  it  being  left  to  gesture  to  determine 
in  what  person  a  verb  is  to  be  taken  ;  ni  ne,  for 
instance,  being  "  I  do  it  "  or  "  you  do  it,"  accord- 
ing to  the  significant  gestures  of  the  speaker,  just 
as  in   Mpongwe   tonda    means  "  to   love,"   tonda 


296      THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE. 

"  not  to  love."  *  Spix  and  Martins  describe  a  simi- 
lar condition  of  speech  among  certain  Brazilian 
tribes,  with  whom  the  projection  of  the  mouth  in 
the  direction  intended  serves  to  make  the  words 
"  wood-go  "  signify  "  I  will  go  into  the  wood." 
Such  a  state  of  things  is  indeed  hard  to  realise, 
with  no  pronouns  and  no  verbs ;  and  yet  out  of  it 
grew  first  the  conception  of  action  in  relation  to 
the  person,  and  then  in  relation  to  time.  Men 
were  slow  in  arriving  at  a  distinction  between 
one's  self  and  another ;  the  three  personal  pro- 
nouns could  not  have  come  into  existence  until 
after  the  genesis  of  a  plural,  and  the  idea  of  a 
subject-pronoun  was  evolved  last  of  all.  The  verb 
would  seem  to  have  been  at  first  not  unlike  the 
genitive.  Primarily  the  rough-hewn  chaotic  word, 
with  its  undeveloped  potentiality  of  meaning,  was 
accompanied  by  visible  action  in  order  to  impart  to 
it  the  signification  of  agency  or  intention ;  after- 
wards a  substantive  was  brought  into  juxtaposition 
to  it,  the  sense  of  the  compound  being  settled  by 
outward  action  or  by  the  circumstances  of  the 
case  ;  and  finally,  these  substantives,  worn  down 
to  personal  pronouns,  became  differentiated,  and, 
joined  in  apposition  with  the  roots,  formed  a  kind 
of  compound  in  which  something — eating,  doing, 
or  the  like — was  attributed  to  the  pronoun.2     As 

1  Wilson,  Gram.,  p.  32. 

2  In  the  Polynesian  languages,  the  verb  has  never  succeeded  in 


THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE.      297 

in  the  instance  quoted  above  from  the  Accadian, 
or  as  in  so  many  Turanian  languages,  Magyar,  for 
example  (where  it  is  only  by  using  different  pro- 
nominal words  that  Ms-em,  "my  knife/'  can  be 
distinguished  from  vdr-ok,  "  I  wait,"  the  aorist 
vdr-t-am  being  actually  identical),  the  verbal  form 
was  simply  a  genitive,  and  has  to  be  explained  like 
all  other  genitives.  Were  we  to  represent  it  sym- 
bolically, we  might  say  that  "  expecting  =  me  " 
was  the  source  both  of  "  my  expectation"  and 
of  "  I  expect."  The  position  of  the  pronoun  in 
Aryan  is  alone  to  be  noticed :  it  follows  instead  of 
preceding  its  governing  noun  ;  and  this  reversal  of 
the  usual  order  of  words  implies  not  only  that  the 
personal  pronouns  had  been  fixed  before  the  verbal 
forms  became  crystallised,  but  also  that  the  feeling 
that  these  pronouns  were  different  from  all  other 
substantives,  and  that  the  power  of  the  individual 
over  action  was  omnipotent,  was  from  the  very 
earliest  times  ever  present  to  the  Aryan  mind.  It 
still  required  one  step  further,  however,  to  ascend 
from  these  merely  personal  relations  to  that  con- 
ception of  time  which  with  us  lies  at  the  very 
foundation  of  the  verb.  It  is  a  conception  that  is 
still  unknown  to  many  races  of  men,  and  which  is 

comiDg  into  existence  at  all.  The  Dayak,  for  instance,  says  "he- 
witk-jacket-with-white,"  instead  of  "he  has  a  white  jacket  on," 
replacing  the  verbal  notion  by  the  adjectival  (Steinthal,  "  Charak- 
teristik,"  &c,  p.  165). 


298      THE  METAPHYSICS  OF  LANGUAGE. 

conspicuous  for  its  absence  among  the  polysyn- 
thetic  languages  of  North  America.  The  New 
Caledonian,  with  whom  " yesterday"  and  "  to- 
morrow "  are  unknown  terms,  or  the  member  of 
the  beehive  communities  of  the  Old  World,  had  no 
need,  and  no  occasion,  to  mark  the  lapse  of  time 
in  their  monotonous  and  vegetable  existence.  The 
category  of  space  historically  precedes  the  cate- 
gory of  time. 

Further  illustrations  of  the  Metaphysics  of  Lan- 
guage are,  I  think,  unnecessary.  Enough  has  been 
said  to  show  what  is  meant  by  the  phrase,  and 
the  way  in  which  this  part  of  Glottology  can  be 
worked  out.  A  comparative  analysis  of  words 
leads  us  to  the  earliest  linguistic  contrivances  for 
expressing  the  relations  of  grammar.  They  are 
but  the  fossilised  embodiment  of  the  thought  which 
they  clothed  ;  and  we  are  thus  enabled  to  pene- 
trate to  the  germ  and  starting-point  of  those 
conceptions  which  are  summed  up  in  an  ordinary 
grammar.  They  are  the  mental  forms  which  we 
finally  reach,  and  which  have  developed  into  all 
the  elaborate  grammatical  machinery  of  modern 
speech.  We  get  back,  as  it  were,  into  that  very 
thought  in  its  most  original  form  which  has  been 
reflected  in  spoken  language.  We  enter  the  world 
of  ideas,  and,  like  the  physicist  with  his  doctrine 
of  force,  find  ourselves  dealing  with  metaphysical 
facts. 


if    LI  B  R  A  RY     ] 

UNIVERSITY    <>K 

C  Al *  I 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

COMPARATIVE   MYTHOLOGY  AND   THE   SCIENCE   OF   RELIGION. 

Language,  we  have  said,  is  the  mirror  of  society, 
because  it  is  the  embodiment  of  thought.  Every 
word  has  a  history,  and  that  history  is  really  a 
history  of  the  mind.  The  two  correlatives  cannot 
be  separated  from  one  another  :  thought  is  but  the 
internal,  language  the  external.  Form  and  con- 
tent, creator  and  created — these  are  other  ways  of 
expressing  the  same  thing  :  the  statue  does  not 
represent  more  truly  the  artistic  imagination  of  its 
sculptor  than  does  the  word  the  mind  that  shaped 
it.  And  just  as  the  statue  will  react  on  the  artist, 
and  produce,  as  in  Egypt,  a  conventional  concep- 
tion of  beauty  and  proportion,  so  in  a  greater 
degree  will  the  plastic  word  react  on  the  mind  of 
man.  The  two  sides  of  the  prism,  the  inward  and 
the  outward,  act  and  react  one  upon  the  other;  and 
where  the  sense  of  objectivity  is  strong,  or  the  ab- 
solute nothingness  of  the  mere  empty  husk  of  the 


300  PHILOLOGY  AND   RELIGION. 

word  is  forgotten,  words  are  likely  to  become  our 
masters,  and  to  dictate  to  us  the  meaning  of  things. 
If  the  Greek  with  his  autonomous  individualism 
could  speak  of  the  d%la><Ti$  Xoyov — the  appreciation 
which  he  set  upon  the  utterances  of  his  own  lips 
— the  law-loving,  abstraction-worshipping  Roman, 
on  the  other  hand,  knew  only  of  the  vis  verbi,  a 
fitting  echo  of  military  martinetism.  Language  is  a 
natural  growth  as  well  as  an  artificial  production. 
It  has  developed  along  with  the  awakening  con- 
sciousness, and  much  of  it  will  be  at  best  but 
semi-conscious.  At  the  be^innim*1  there  was  no 
clear  distinction  between  the  parts  of  speech  or 
the  objects  which  were  denoted ;  all  lay  chaotic 
and  undeveloped  in  each  embryonic  combination 
of  sounds,  and  these  inevitably  called  up  erroneous 
ideas,  and  laid  the  foundations  of  a  fetichism 
which  confounded  together  the  a^ent  and  the 
patient.  But  more  than  this ;  language,  like 
the  rocks,  is  strewn  with  the  fossilised  wrecks  of 
former  conditions  of  society.  Words  which  were 
once  pregnant  with  meaning  may  either  put  on 
new  significations  in  consequence  of  social  changes; 
or  long  use  and  acquaintance  may  deprive  them 
of  their  sense,  so  that  the  sole  meaning  they 
possess  is  their  mere  sound ;  or,  again,  their 
original  force  may  be  forgotten,  and  they  may 
survive   as  proper  names   or  in  connection  with 


PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION.  301 

obsolete  ceremonies  ;  or,  lastly,  they  may  be  con- 
fused with  other  better-known  words,  and  so  bring 
about  a  confusion  of  ideas.  Who  now  connects 
the  same  conceptions  with  such  terms  as  "  demo- 
cracy "  or  "  church "  as  they  conveyed  to  our 
ancestors?  "  Shall"  and  6i  will  "  have  become 
auxiliaries,  unmeaning  by  themselves  ;  "  Jove  " 
and  "Yule"  no  longer  remind  us  of  the  bright 
vault  of  heaven  or  the  burning  wheel  (old  Norse 
kjul)  that  symbolised  the  circle  of  the  year,  while 
"  beefeater  "  and  "  Brasenose  College"  show  little 
trace  of  the  waiter  at  the  side-table  (buffetier)  or 
of  the  brewing-house  (Brasen-huis)  from  which 
they  sprung.  The  words  in  which  one  period  of 
society  struggles  to  express  its  knowledge  and 
meaning  may  become  the  misunderstood  shams  of 
a  later  generation,  and  the  explanation  of  them 
which  is  demanded  by  the  mind  serves  only  to 
perpetuate  the  delusion  and  stereotype  an  imagin- 
ary world.  Indeed,  the  first  act  of  the  young 
consciousness  is  to  ask  what  is  the  reason  of  that 
which  it  sees  about  it  ?  The  formation  of  a  lan- 
guage itself  implies  a  desire  to  know  objects  by 
naming  them,  and  so  distinguishing  them  one  from 
the  other.  Every  name  that  is  given  is  the  sum- 
ming-up of  all  attainable  knowledge  concerning  a 
thing  ;  it  contains  within  itself  the  answer  which 
man  attempts  to  make  to  that  ever-recurring  ques- 


302  PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION. 

tion  "  why  ?  "  and  all  the  knowledge  and  experience 
which  he  can  bring  to  bear  upon  it.  But  the 
knowledge  and  the  answer  of  the  first  men  must 
have  been  very  different  from  that  of  a  more  cul- 
tivated era  of  humanity.  The  Athenian  of  the 
age  of  Perikles  would  wiew  the  world  with  eyes 
very  unlike  those  with  which  the  primitive  Aryan 
gazed  upon  it.  The  old  name  would  not  express 
the  new  meaning  ;  and  if  it  had  not  expanded 
with  the  growing  knowledge  of  the  speakers,  it 
would  of  necessity  cramp  and  confine  the  signifi- 
cation within  the  limits  originally  assigned  to  it, 
and  cease  to  reflect  the  living  knowledge  of  the 
day,  and  to  be  anything  more  than  an  antiquated 
symbol.  Words  have  a  life,  because  the  society 
which  produces  them  has  a  life  ;  and  just  as  the 
old  forms  of  society  become  dead  and  misleading, 
so  also  do  the  words  which  shadow  them  forth. 
They  no  longer  answer  truly  to  objects,  and  there- 
fore objects  must  be  made  to  answer  to  them ;  and 
thus  a  dark  cloudland  is  built  up  upon  these  worn- 
out  husks,  hiding  nature  and  reality  from  the 
mind  and  the  belief. 

Now  this  is  mythology  exactly.  Its  creations 
move,  like  the  ghosts  of  Homer,  in  an  unreal  fairy- 
land, and  their  sole  basis  is  the  names  which  are 
given  to  them  ;  for  these  names  are  the  heirlooms 
of  a  traditional  past — the  heritage  which  has  come 


PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION.  303 

down  from  the  giants  of  old  time;  this  is  their 
only  title  to  existence  and  respect.  The  traditional 
past,  therefore,  which  has  given  them  their  exist- 
ence, must  furnish  the  key  which  shall  unlock 
them.  We  must  track  the  names  back  historically, 
until  we  reach  the  age  when  they  were  living  and 
full  of  significance.  Mythology  is  founded  upon 
words,  and  the  history  of  words,  therefore,  must 
explain  it.1     But  we  must  not  forget  that,  after 

1  Mr  Fiske,  who  sees  clearly  that  a  myth  is  not  the  result  of  the 
forgetf ulness  of  a  word  or  phrase,  but  of  the  thought  which,  under- 
lay them,  very  truly  says  ("  Myths  and  Myth-makers,"  p.  214), 
"  The  myths,  and  customs,  and  beliefs  which,  in  an  advanced  stage 
of  culture,  seem  meaningless  save  when  characterised  by  some 
quaintly-wrought  device  of  symbolic  explanation,  did  not  seem 
meaningless  in  the  lower  culture  which  gave  birth  to  them.  Myths, 
like  words,  survive  their  primitive  meaning.  In  the  early  stage, 
the  myth  is  part  and  parcel  of  the  current  mode  of  philosophising  ; 
the  explanation  which  it  offers  is,  for  the  time,  the  natural  one — the 
one  which  would  most  readily  occur  to  any  one  (?)  thinking  on  the 
theme  with  which  the  myth  is  concerned.  But,  by  and  by,  the 
mode  of  philosophising  has  changed  ;  explanations  which  formerly 
seemed  quite  obvious  no  longer  occur  to  any  one  ;  but  the  myth 
has  acquired  an  independent  substantive  existence,  and  continues 
to  be  handed  down  from  parents  to  children  as  something  true, 
though  no  one  can  tell  why  it  is  true.  Lastly,  the  myth  itself 
gradually  fades  from  remembrance,  often  leaving  behind  it  some 
utterly  unintelligible  custom  or  seemingly  absurd  superstitious 
notion."  Elsewhere  he  adds  (p.  195),  "  The  physical  theory  of 
myths  will  be  properly  presented  and  comprehended  only  when  it 
is  understood  that  we  accept  the  physical  derivation  of  such  stories 
as  the  Iliad  myth  in  much  the  same  way  as  we  are  bound  to  accept 
the  physical  etymologies  of  such  words  as  soul,  consider,  truth,  con- 
vince, deliberate,  and  the  like.  The  late  Dr  Gibbs,  of  Yale  College, 
in  his  '  Philological  Studies,'  ....  describes  such  etymologies  as 


304  PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION. 

all,  words  will  only  explain  the  external  side  of 
mythology.  It  is  true  that  this  is  its  chief  and 
most  important  side ;  but,  without  an  inward  and 
sustaining  spirit,  mythology  could  not  have  lasted 
so  long  and  so  persistently  as  it  has  done,  and 
have  blinded  the  eyes  to  its  manifold  absurdities. 
There  must  have  been  an  element  in  it  which 
appealed  to  the  heart  of  man,  and  preserved  it 
from  being  relegated  to  the  nursery,  like  the  fairy 
tales  which  yet  claim  the  same  origin  as  the 
gorgeous  mythology  of  the  Greek  poets.  This 
element  was  the  religious  instinct.  Behind  the 
outward  veil  of  the  myth  was  enshrined  the  belief 
in  God  and  the  soul,  more  and  more  concealed 
and  over-encrusted,  it  may  be,  in  the  course  of 
generations  ;  but  still  there  it  abided  almost  un- 
consciously, and  kept  the  old  mythology  from 
premature  death.  It  is  clear  that  we  are  here 
dealing  with  a  similar  case  to  that  which  we 
described  in  the  last  chapter.  As  we  get  at  the 
original  conceptions  which  underlie  the  several 
relations  of  grammar  by  a  comparison  of  the  forms 
which  denote  them,  so  in  mythology  we  must  dis- 

*  faded  metaphors.'  In  similar-wise,  while  refraining  from  charac- 
terising the  Iliad  or  the  tragedy  of  '  Hamlet ' — any  more  than  I 
would  characterise  '  Le  Juif  Errant,'  by  Sue,  or  '  La  Maison  Fores- 
tiore,'  by  Erckmann-Chatriau — as  nature-myths,  I  would  at  the 
same  time  consider  these  poems  well  described  as  embodying 
1  faded  nature-myths.' ;' 


PHILOLOGY  AND   RELIGION.  305 

cover  the  spirit  that  has  given  it  birth  by  an 
inductive  comparison  of  the  various  forms  with 
which  it  has  clothed  itself.  These  are  words  and 
phrases,  and  consequently  Comparative  Mythology 
is  but  a  branch  of  the  Science  of  Language. 

But  the  religious  idea  can  make  use  of  other 
means  of  expression  besides  mythology.  What  we 
call  a  religion  differs  from  mythology  in  the  same 
way  that  a  civilised  state  differs  from  a  savage 
tribe.  The  one  is  organised  and  artificial,  the  other 
is  spontaneous  and  natural.  There  is  no  longer  a 
sort  of  dim  half-consciousness  of  spiritual  being ; 
the  individual  has  awakened  to  a  consciousness  of 
himself  and  his  relations  to  others.  In  a  beehive 
community  morality  is  impossible,  much  less  a 
worship  of  one  God  ;  it  is  only  when  the  concep- 
tion of  the  individual  has  been  reached  that  the 
idea  of  responsibility  begins,  and  with  it  both 
morality  and  the  endeavour  to  obtain  a  personal 
salvation.  The  savage  knows  nothing  of  all 
this ;  sin  and  moral  impurity  are  words  which  he 
would  not  understand ;  his  only  idea  of  happiness 
consists  in  abundance  of  food;  the  only  evils 
from  which  he  prays  to  be  delivered  are  material 
discomforts.  A  religion  must  be  organised  and 
individual ;  and  this  implies  tradition  and  litera- 
ture on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other  hand  a 
hierarchic  aristocracy,   in  so  far  as  individualism 

u 


306  PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION. 

presupposes  distinction  and  superiority.  To  call 
fetichism  a  religion,  therefore,  is  a  misuse  of 
terms.  Where  every  man  is  his  own  priest,  there 
is  no  system  in  which  one  man  knows  the  will 
of  the  gods  better  than  another.  Rome  had  no 
religion  until  the  days  of  the  Empire,  for  its 
organised  cultus  was  political ;  and  religion  in 
Greece  was  confined  to  Delphi  or  the  Orphic 
hierophants.  The  individual  character  of  a  re- 
ligion is  universally  recognised ;  where  history 
can  present  us  with  no  founder  like  Buddha  or 
Confucius  or  Christ,  later  legends  delight  to 
trace  back  its  ceremonies  and  organisation  to 
some  single  Numa  Pompilius. 

But  the  founder  must  have  materials  to  work 
upon.  There  must  be  the  religious  instinct,  with- 
out which  all  religion  is  impossible ;  there  must 
be  a  hallowed  stock  of  traditional  beliefs  and 
rites ;  and  above  all,  there  must  be  a  willingness 
on  the  part  of  the  people  to  accept  the  system  that 
is  formed  out  of  them.  The  founder  of  a  creed 
generally  comes  forward  as  the  reformer  of  a  past 
unorganised  cultus,  and  if  he  would  succeed,  he 
must  strike  a  chord  in  harmony  with  the  wants 
and  wishes  of  his  age.  Buddha  preached  a  gospel 
of  freedom  from  the  intolerable  yoke  of  castes  and 
Brahmanical  despotism  ;  Mohammed  broke  up  the 
aristocracy  of  Arab  traders,  and  proclaimed  equality 


PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION.  307 

before  one  God  and  one  Prophet  to  the  sons  of  the 
desert ;  and  Joseph  Smith  flattered  the  sensuous- 
ness  of  American  enthusiasts  and  the  millenarian 
dreams  of  uneducated  Protestantism.  Mythology 
necessarily  precedes  a  religion.  It  may  be  extir- 
pated by  its  successor,  or  it  may  be  taken  up  and 
absorbed  into  it,  or  it  may  linger  on  side  by  side 
with  the  new  creed,  sometimes  in  alliance,  some- 
times in  antagonism.  It  never  follows  it,  how- 
ever, for  the  myths  which  so  often  gather  round 
the  person  of  the  real  or  imaginary  legislator  are 
borrowed  from  older  legends,  and  do  but  find  a 
new  hero  to  whom  to  attach  the  venerated  stories  of 
the  timeworn  folklore.  The  saints  of  Christendom 
have  taken  the  place  of  the  gods  and  demigods 
of  pagan  antiquity,  and  the  deities  of  the  Veda 
became  the  evil  spirits  of  Zoroastrianism.  Tritd, 
the  Hindu  power  of  night,  and  Aki,  the  serpent  of 
darkness,  change,  in  the  A  vesta,  into  the  human 
Thraetaona,  the  son  of  the  first  man,  and  Azhi 
dahaka,  "  the  biting  snake,"  which  he  destroys, 
and  the  transformation  is  completed  when  the 
religion  can  no  longer  assimilate  the  old  mytho- 
logy even  thus  far,  and  Thraetaona  and  the  serpent 
become  the  Feridun  and  Zohak  of  Firdusi — the 
Kyrus  and  Astyages  of  the  Greeks.  Assimilation 
of  pre-existing  beliefs  must  necessarily  be  the  work 
of  a  new  religion  ;  the  beliefs  will  be  modified  and 


308  PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION. 

arranged ;  but  if  the  religion  is  to  make  its  way, 
it  cannot  afford  to  ignore  the  current  superstitions 
and  practices  of  the  country.  Indeed,  these  will 
colour  it  the  further  it  spreads  and  the  more  it 
appeals  to  the  uneducated  portion  of  society ;  and 
it  is  no  strange  thing  for  a  religion  which  begins 
with  a  protest  against  the  popular  idolatry  to  end 
by  becoming  inextricably  mixed  up  with  it.  Even 
if  this  does  not  happen,  however,  it  is  plain  that, 
in  order  to  understand  a  religion  rightly,  we  must 
know  the  meaning  of  the  mythological  elements 
which  it  incorporates  and  rests  upon,  and  of  the 
terms  which  are  its  own  watchwords.  These 
change  with  the  change  of  knowledge  and  cir- 
cumstances and  generations  ;  and  a  church  will 
often  be  found  fighting  over  the  signification  of  a 
word  which  originally  bore  an  import  quite  other 
than  any  dreamed  of  by  the  combatants.  The 
interminable  wranglings  and  divisions  that  have 
been  carried  on  in  modern  Europe  over  the  ques- 
tions of  the  Eucharist  and  the  ministerial  orders 
would  have  been  unintelligible  to  the  first  Chris- 
tians. The  battle  is  one  of  words,  but  the  insertion 
of  an  iota  was  once  sufficient  to  deluge  Alexandria 
with  blood.  Here,  then,  Glottology,  with  its  calm, 
scientific  dispassionateness  and  its  rules  of  sound 
comparison,  is  needed  in  order  that  we  may  com- 
prehend the  origin  and  growth  of  religious  ideas, 


PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION.  309 

and  of  the  dogmas  which  endeavour  to  express 
them.  In  so  far  as  the  science  of  religions  consists 
in  comparing  words  with  words,  dogmas  with 
dogmas,  and  in  tracing  the  development  of  the 
one  out  of  the  other,  in  so  far  it  is,  like  mythology, 
a  branch  of  the  science  of  language,  and  this, 
too,  apart  from  its  embodiment  of  mythological 
elements,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  demand  the 
key  of  Glottology. 

But  there  is  another  reason  why  the  comparative 
study  of  religions  calls  for  the  glottologist.  The 
oldest  and  the  most  interesting  are  locked  up  in 
the  recesses  of  dead  languages,  and  it  is  only  the 
scientific  method  which  can  accurately  explain 
much  that  is  most  important  in  the  language  of 
the  Rig- Veda,  and  still  more  of  the  Zend-Avesta. 
The  traditional  renderings  of  Sanskrit  pundits  are 
often  grotesque,  often  the  result  of  modern  mis- 
conception ;  and  some  of  the  most  valuable  dis- 
closures of  the  old  Hindu  hymns,  which  have 
helped  to  explain  the  problem  of  mythology,  would 
never  have  been  made  without  the  application  of 
glottological  laws.  Even  the  Old  Testament 
cannot  afford  to  dispense  with  this  assistance : 
whether  or  not  Samson  is  the  Melkarth  of  Tyre 
and  the  Herakles  of  Greece  can  only  be  decided 
by  Comparative  Philology.  The  same  holds  good 
of  the  Science  of  Religions  if  we  regard  it  from 


310  PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION. 

another  point  of  view.  Every  system  of  religion 
consists  of  a  certain  number  of  doctrines  which 
circle  round  some  central  one,  and  the  meaning  of 
this  is  all-important  if  we  would  understand  the 
system.  But  doctrines  alter,  although  the  words 
in  which  they  are  formulated  do  not ;  and  to 
discover  their  original  import  is  to  discover  the 
original  sense  attached  to  the  words.  A  good  ex- 
ample of  this  is  the  Nirvana,  the  point  about 
which  the  whole  system  of  Buddhism  revolves ; 
and  until  we  have  accurately  settled  the  primary 
signification  of  this  word,  and  the  historical  modi- 
fications which  it  has  undergone  in  various  ages 
and  among  various  races,  we  shall  never  properly 
know  what  Buddhism  is.  Religion  is  the  most 
spiritual,  and  therefore  the  deepest  and  most  en- 
during, expression  of  society ;  and  if  the  history 
of  society  is  to  be  sought  in  language,  yet  more 
emphatically  must  the  history  of  religion  be. 

Before,  however,  we  can  venture  to  compare 
religions  together,  we  must  establish  the  scientific 
study  of  mythology  upon  a  firm  and  satisfactory 
foundation.  As  a  branch  of  Glottology,  it  must 
be  investigated  upon  the  same  principles  and  in 
the  same  way.  We  must  never  forget  that  it  is 
a  dependent  science,  and  is,  therefore,  not  to  be 
t  reated  as  though  the  higher  science  did  not  exist. 
To  draw  conclusions  from  a  comparison  of  myths, 


PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION.  311 

which  are  not  supported  by  etymological  evidence, 
is  altogether  unwarrantable.  If  Comparative  Phi- 
lology can  show  that  Paris  is  the  Panis  of  the 
Yeda,  the  robbers  of  the  bright  cow-clouds  of  the 
dawn ;  that  Helen  is  Sarama,  the  dawn  goddess  ; 
and  that  Akhilles,  who  dies  at  the  western  gate  of 
Troy,  is  Aharyus,  the  sun,  from  the  Sanskrit  akar, 
"  day,"  then  the  burden  of  the  Iliad  may  well  be 
the  old  fight  between  the  night  and  the  morning, 
the  old  story  of  the  victory  and  death  of  the  solar 
hero  around  the  walls  and  battlements  of  the  sky.1 

1  The  evidence  of  Comparative  Philology  here,  as  elsewhere, 
finds  its  counterpart  and  confirmation  in  the  evidence  derived  from 
a  comparison  of  the  myths  themselves.  The  Homeric  siege  of  Troy 
is  but  a  repetition  of  an  earlier  siege,  when  Laomedon  and  the  walls 
of  his  city,  which  "  like  a  mist  rose  into  towers  "  at  the  song  of 
Apollo,  were  conquered  and  overthrown  by  Herakles  ;  and  of  the 
siege  of  Thebes,  which  was  hardly  less  famous  in  Greek  story  than 
that  of  Troy.  To  seek  for  fragments  of  history  in  either  of  these 
is  like  looking  for  gold  in  the  rays  of  the  sun.  The  legend,  it  is 
true,  had  localised  itself,  in  the  one  case  in  Thebes,  in  the  other 
case  in  the  old  Mysian  town  of  Ilium  ;  but  such  a  geographical 
setting  is  necessary  for  all  myths.  It  is  possible  that  struggles 
between  the  Semitic  companions  of  the  "Eastern"  (Kadmus)  and 
the  inhabitants  of  Boeotia  may  have  occasioned  the  selection  of 
Thebes,  just  as  Ilium  may  have  been  the  centre  of  unrecorded 
conflicts  between  Ionic  settlers  and  Asiatic  natives.  Dr  E.  Curtius 
is  doubtless  right  in  ascribing  the  origin  of  the  popular  lays  out  of 
which  the  Iliad  has  grown  to  the  period  of  the  Greek  emigration 
to  Asia  Minor,  when  fugitives  from  the  Peloponnesus  and  from 
Athens  came  flying  from  the  Doric  invaders,  carrying  with  them 
their  traditions  of  ancient  Akheean  glory  and  power  among  the 
hills  of  Argos.  It  is  thus  that  we  can  explain  the  curious  mixture 
of  regal  autocracy  and  Ionic  democracy,  such  as  would  prevail 
among  struggling  colonists,  which  meets  us  in  the  Homeric  poems, 


Q 


12  PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION. 


But  to  resolve  Orestes  into  the  sun  and  Semiramis 
into  the  morning  is  to  step  beyond  the  limits 
allowed  to  us,  and  to  assert  what  cannot  be  proved. 
In  comparing  our  myths  we  must  never  lose  sight 
of  the  etymological  part  of  the  subject,  since  it 
is  this  which  gives  security  to  our  conclusions. 
Unless  the  features  of  a  myth  unmistakably  re- 
semble those  of  another,  more  especially  in  the 
smaller  details,  we  should  be  very  cautious  in  set- 
ting it  by  the  side  of  another,  where  the  proper 
names  are  not  transparent.  There  is  no  doubt 
as  to  the  meaning  of  the  names  of  Phoebus  and 
Hyperion,  and  we  may  therefore  class  them  with 
other  solar  myths  without  hesitation,  even  suppos- 
ing that  the  outlines  of  the  stories  told  about  them 
were  vague  and  general ;  but  to  discover  the  sun 
on  the  horizon  of  the  sea  in  the  frog-prince  of 
the  fairy-tale,  is  to  transgress  the  boundaries  of 
scientific  evidence,  and  incur  the  charge  of  riding 
a  hobby  too  hard.  Besides  the  care  which  must 
thus  be  taken  to  make  language  the  ultimate 
ground  of  our  comparisons,  we  must  be  on  our 
guard  against  that  hankering  after  unity  which 
has  been  so  fatal  to  glottological  progress.  The 
general  laws  of  Comparative  Mythology,  like  the 

aa  well  as  the  strange  confusion  between  the  opponents  of  the 
Greeks  in  Mysian  Troy,  and  on  the  banks  of  the  Mysian  Xauthus, 
and  those  Lykian  Troes  who  contended  with  them  farther  south  in 
the  neighbourhood  of  the  Lykian  Xauthus. 


PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION.  313 

general  laws  of  Comparative  Philology,  must  be 
obtained  by  the  widest  possible  induction  of  in- 
stances ;  we  must  collect  our  myths  from  every 
race  and  climate  under  the  sun,  and  we  shall  often 
find  that  some  low  and  despised  tribe  of  savages 
can  furnish  us  with  a  clue  to  the  laws  we  are 
seeking.  Mythology,  like  language,  is  a  reflec- 
tion of  the  human  mind ;  it  belongs  more  especi- 
ally to  what  we  may  call  the  natural  era  of  man- 
kind ;  1  and  since  the  framework  of  the  mind,  and 
the  circumstances  which  surround  the  life  of  the 
savage,  are  much  the  same  everywhere,  we  shall 
expect  to  meet  with  a  common  similarity  and 
obedience  to  general  laws  in  the  myths  of  all  na- 
tions. But  we  must  not  go  further  than  this,  and, 
in  disregard  of  all  linguistic  testimony,  derive  the 
stories  of  Aryans,  and  Finns,  and  Kafirs,  which 
resemble   one  another,  from    one    and    the   same 

1  Myth  is  the  necessary  form  in  which  thought  finds  its  expres- 
sion among  uncivilised  peoples.  It  is  to  the  savage  and  the  child 
what  history  is  to  us,  and  just  as  cotemporaneous  literature  accom- 
panies history,  so  does  oral  tradition  accompany  myth.  There  is  a 
mythical  geography  and  a  mythical  philosophy,  as  well  as  a  mythi- 
cal history,  if  the  expression  may  be  allowed  :  geography  must 
begin  with  its  Odyssey,  philosophy  with  its  Eris  and  Eros,  and 
history  with  its  heroic  age.  The  child  and  the  savage  merge  the 
subject  and  object  into  one,  and  can  draw  no  distinction  between 
them  ;  the  objective  me  preceded  the  subjective  ego,  aham,  while, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  creations  of  the  imagination  were  regarded 
as  being  as  much  realities  as  the  events  and  objects  of  everyday 
life. 


314  PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION. 

source.  Where  language  demonstrates  identity 
of  origin,  there  will  there  be  identity  of  origin 
among  the  myths,  but  not  otherwise.  To  imagine 
that  the  coincidence  of  legends  among  two  races 
unallied  in  language  means  anything  more  than 
the  common  uniformity  of  intellectual  action  in 
the  mythopceic  age,  is  to  repeat  the  mistake  of 
bygone  writers,  who  believed  that  the  story  of  a 
flood  among  different  peoples  bore  witness  to  the 
Biblical  deluge.  With  them  the  belief  was  excus- 
able, for  they  had  been  taught  the  existence  of  a 
single  primeval  language,  and  the  transformation 
of  the  heroes  of  Genesis  into  the  personages  of 
heathen  mythology.  But  where  there  is  no  dis- 
position to  see  Noah  in  Kronos,  and  his  three  sons 
in  Zeus,  Poseidon,  and  Aides,  the  indiscriminate 
lumping  of  myths  together,  without  any  heed  to 
the  requirements  of  Glottology,  is  altogether  in- 
defensible.1 

1  Mr  Fiske  well  says  ("Myths  and  Myth-makers,"  p.  160), 
"The  mere  fact  that  solar  heroes,  all  over  the  world,  travel  iu  a 
certain  path  and  slay  imps  of  darkness,  is  of  great  value  as  throw- 
ing light  upon  primeval  habits  of  thought,  but  it  is  of  no  value  as 
evidence  for  or  against  an  alleged  community  of  civilisation  between 
different  races.  The  same  is  true  of  the  sacredness  universally 
attached  to  certain  numbers.  Dr  Brinton's  opinion  that  the 
sanctity  of  the  number  four,  in  nearly  all  systems  of  mythology,  is 
due  to  a  primitive  worship  of  the  cardinal  points,  becomes  very 
probable  when  we  recollect  that  the  similar  pre-eminence  of  seven 
is  almost  demonstrably  connected  with  the  adoration  of  the  suu^ 
moon,  and  five  visible  planets,  which  has  left  its  record  iu  the 
structure  and  nomenclature  of  the  Aryan  and  Semitic  week." 


PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION.  315 

There  is  yet  another  fault  of  which  we  must 
beware.  Mythology  has  a  setting  in  geography 
and  history.  Myths  move  in  an  unreal  world  of 
their  own,  a  dead  reflection  of  this  world,  distorted 
by  the  childlike  ignorance  of  primitive  man. 
Hence  there  is  a  mythical  geography,  a  mythical 
history,  and  a  mythical  philosophy.  When  the 
original  physical  reference  of  the  myth  had  faded 
away  from  the  memory,  it  was  necessary  for  the 
story-teller  to  hang  his  tale  upon  some  fact,  or 
person,  or  place.  When  this  was  once  found,  and 
the  needful  local  colouring  imparted,  the  myth 
continued  to  circle  around  it,  and  to  attract  fresh 
elements  until  a  change  of  conditions  transferred 
the  circle  of  myths  so  formed  to  a  new  local  centre. 
To  look  for  any  traces  of  history  here  is  obviously 
out  of  the  question.  Even  granting  that  the 
mythical  element  has  been  grafted  upon  a  real 
person  and  a  real  fact,  the  latter  were  but  the 
framework,  which  was  wholly  swallowed  up  in  the 
animating  mass  of  mythic  matter.  Not  history 
but  folklore  was  what  was  wanted ;  and  nothing 
perishes  so  quickly  as  names  which  have  no  mean- 
ing, which  are  merely  the  proper  names  of  actual 
men,  and  not  the  crystallised  reflections  of  a 
popular  tale.  The  memory  of  the  past  dwells  but 
little  in  the  mind  of  the  uneducated ;  the  battle  of 
Minden  in  1759,  little  more  than  a  hundred  years 


316  PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION. 

ago,  is  utterly  forgotten  in  the  neighbourhood, 
and,  according  to  Hahn,  all  that  Skanderbeg's 
countrymen  remember  of  him  is  a  marvellous 
escape  which  never  took  place,1  while  the  oldest 
Albanian  genealogy  cannot  mount  beyond  eleven 
ancestors.  The  "  Niebelungen  Lied"  is  a  most 
instructive  example  of  the  relation  between  myth 
and  history.  The  Sigurd  of  the  Edda,  who  gains 
possession  of  the  bright  treasure  of  the  Niflungs  or 
clouds  by  slaying  Fafnir,  the  serpent  of  winter, 
and  after  delivering  Brynhild  from  her  magic  sleep, 
is  made  by  Gunnar  to  forget  his  betrothed  and 
marry  her  daughter,  Gudrun  or  Grimhild, — a 
crime  to  be  avenged  by  his  murder  at  the  hands 
of  Gudrun's  brothers,  again  to  be  avenged,  after 
Brynhild  has  burnt  herself  on  Sigurd's  pyre,  like 
Herakles  on  Mount  (Eta,  by  Atli,  Brynhild' s  brother, 
— this  Sigurd  of  the  Edda  re-appears  in  the  old 
Saxon  tale  of  "  Dietrich  of  Bern."  Dietrich  or 
Theodoric  rules  at  Bonn,  the  earlier  name  of  which 
was  Bern,  and  Etzel,  the  Atli  of  the  Scandinavian 
version,  is  the  younger  son  of  Osid,  the  Frisian 
king,  who  conquers  Saxony  from  King  Melias, 
and  lives  in  Susat,  the  present  Soest  in  Westphalia, 
while  the  Nibelungs  or  cloud-children  dwell  at 
Worms.  But  the  story,  as  we  have  it  in  the 
great  German   epic  of  the    twelfth  century,  has 

1  You  Hahn,  "Sagwissenscliaftliche  Studien,"  i.  62,  63. 


PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION.  317 

undergone  yet  another  change.  Bern  has  become 
Verona,  Dietrich  Theodoric,  the  famous  Gothic 
conqueror  of  Italy,  and  Etzel,  Attila  the  Hun. 
The  Jormunrek  of  the  Icelandic  myth,  who  slays 
Swanhild,  Sigurd's  posthumous  son,  is  now  Her- 
manric  the  Gothic  king  at  Rome,  and  Sigurd  or 
Siegfrid  himself,  with  Brynhild  and  Gunnar 
(Gunther),  are  identified  with  Gundicar,  the  Bur- 
gundian  victim  of  Attila,  and  the  Austrasian  Sieg- 
bert,  who  reigned  from  561  to  575,  married  Brune- 
hault,  defeated  the  Huns,  and  was  murdered  by 
his  brother's  mistress,  Fredegond.  But  in  spite 
of  these  coincidences,  and  the  historical  colouring 
that  the  later  versions  of  a  literary  age  have 
given  to  the  old  Teutonic  myth  of  the  waxing  and 
waning  of  summer,  we  know  that  neither  history 
nor  even  historical  names  are  to  be  sought  for  in 
the  legend.  The  Attila  of  history  died  two  years 
(453)  before  the  birth  of  the  historical  Theodoric ; 
and  Jornandes,  who  wrote  at  least  twenty  years 
before  the  death  of  the  Austrasian  Siegbert,  was 
already  acquainted  with  Swanhild,  the  child  born 
after  Sigurd's  death.  If  more  were  needed,  the 
Icelandic  and  Saxon  versions  of  the  story  would 
prove  the  mythic  antiquity  of  the  names  of  the 
heroes.  Similarity  of  name  or  local  celebrity  may 
cause  a  myth  to  entwine  itself  about  some  per- 
sonage or  event  of  actual  history,  but  the  latter 


318  PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION. 

thus  far  cease  to  belong  to  history,  and,  unless 
supported  by  cotemporaneous  evidence,  must  be 
relegated  to  the  ideal  land  of  poetry.  The  life  of 
Mohammed  is  full  of  mythic  elements  ;  fragments 
of  old  Arab  folklore  have  fastened  themselves  upon 
it ;  and  were  there  no  other  record  of  the  pro- 
phet's existence,  we  should  have  to  assign  him  to 
the  same  category  as  the  Rishis  of  Brahmanism. 
The  Charlemagne  who  has  taken  the  place  of 
Wodin,  as  in  the  group  of  stars  which  we  still 
call  Charles's  Wain,  belongs  to  myth,  and  not  to 
history.  Myth  has  accidentally  attached  itself  to 
an  actual  personage,  but  it  is  not  the  myth  which 
tells  us  this.  To  seek  for  facts  of  ethnology  and 
tribal  migration  in  the  mythology  of  Greece  is 
but  to  modernise  Euhemerus,  who  found  a  Kretan 
king  in  Zeus,  and  a  Pankhaean  conqueror  in 
Uranus.  To  prop  up  conclusions  so  derived  by 
an  appeal  to  local  names  is  to  argue  in  a  circle. 
We  know  that  nothing  is  more  liable  to  corrup- 
tion than  the  names  of  places  and  tribes  ;  and  the 
attempt  to  explain  their  new  forms  will  either 
itself  originate  the  myth,  like  the  arrow  that  Little 
John  "shot  over  "  S/iotover  Hill  (Chateau  Vert),  or 
occasion  the  old  folklore  to  localise  itself  among 
them.1     The  architectural  remains  of  the  Pelopon- 

1  When  I  was  at  Carcassonne,  I  was  told  that  the  town  derived 
its  name  from  one  of  the  cathedral  hells,   which  was  christened 


PHILOLOGY  AND  EELIGION.  319 

nesus  bear  -witness  to  a  powerful  dynasty  such  as 
that  which  the  Homeric  poems  represent  in  the 
Akhaaan  princes  ;  but  unless  coeval  monuments 
be  discovered  to  corroborate  the  legendary  picture, 
we  must  not  look  for  further  historical  facts  in  the 
Iliad  and  Odyssey.1     And  even  in  this  case  we 

Carcas  according  to  the  forms  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church. 
When  the  bell  was  first  rung,  the  people  shouted  out  "  Carcas 
sonne  !  "  A  parallel  to  this  etymological  myth  will  be  found  in 
the  name  of  the  Swiss  mountain  Pilatus.  The  word  is  really 
Pileatus  ("the  capped  mountain"),  due  to  the  cap  of  cloud  which 
so  frequently  rests  upon  its  summit.  But  of  course  the  popular 
legend  brings  Pilate  hither  from  Galilee,  and  makes  him  drown 
himself  in  the  bitterness  of  remorse  in  a  small  snow  lake  near  the 
top  of  the  mountain.  When  once  the  myth  had  fixed  itself  here, 
natives  and  visitors,  in  spite  of  the  evidence  of  their  senses,  insisted 
on  believing  that  the  characteristics  of  the  lake  were  worthy  of  the 
catastrophe  of  which  it  was  supposed  to  be  the  scene.  Merian 
(in  1642)  describes  it  as  "situated  in  a  secluded  spot,  deep  and 
fearful,  surrounded  by  dark  woods,  and  enclosed  to  prevent  the 
approach  of  man  :  its  colour  is  black,  it  is  always  calm,  and  its 
surface  is  undisturbed  by  the  wind."  It  is  remarkable  that  a 
French  range  of  hills  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Vienne  bears  the 
same  name  as  the  Swiss  mountain,  and  from  the  same  cause. 
Vienne,  however,  was  actually  the  spot  to  which  Pilate  was 
banished  ;  and  the  accidental  coincidence  is  a  striking  instance  of 
the  impossibility  of  discovering  historic  fact  in  a  myth,  although 
we  may  know  from  other  sources  that  it  has  accidentally  fastened 
itself  to  a  real  event.  Close  to  Vienne  is  a  ruin  called  the  "Tour 
de  Maueonseil,"  from  which  Pilate  threw  himself  into  the  river, 
according  to  the  legend  of  the  country,  just  as  he  did  on  the  summit 
of  Pilatus.  The  value  of  a  popular  legend  may  be  judged  from  the 
fact  that  the  tower  is  really  a  tete-du-pont  built  by  Philippe  de 
Valois. 

1  Dr  Schliemann's  recent  discoveries  in  the  Troad  show  that  Ilium 
was  as  real  a  place  as  Thebes,  and  that  the  warrior  bands  who 
chanted  the  deeds  of   Akhilles  and  Agamemnon  transferred  the 


320  PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION. 

should  learn  the  facts,  not  from  the  epic,  but  from 
far  different  sources.  All  that  the  poems  can  do 
is  to  reflect  the  manners  and  beliefs  of  the  age  in 
which  they  grew  up,  and,  however  much  modern 
ised  they  may  be  in  their  present  form,  to  set 
before  our  eyes  the  society  of  a  period  out  of 
which  was  to  spring  the  glorious  culture  of  Athens. 
The  scientific  student  of  mythology  must  always 
remember  that  he  is  dealing  with  the  mythic  ele- 
ment only  ;  historical  facts  may  be  imbedded  in 
it, — upon  this  point  he  cannot  decide, — but  unless 
these  facts  are  discovered  by  historical  means,  no 
amount  of  ingenuity  and  conjecture  can  extract 
them  from  the  myth. 

As  in  language,  we  must  be  careful  to  distin- 
guish in  mythology  between  what  is  native  and 
what  is  borrowed.  It  would  be  worse  than  a 
mistake  to  treat  as  a  pure  and  original  myth  the 
hybrid  conception  which  resulted  from  the  amal- 
gamation of  Herculus,  the  old  Italian  god  of 
enclosures  (from  arced),  with  the  Greek  sun-god 
Herakles  ;  or  of  Saturnus,  the  patron  of  sowing 
and  agriculture,  with  Kronos,  who  owed  his  exist- 
ence to  his  son  Kronion,  "  the  ancient  of  days  ,! 

old  tales  of  the  siege  of  the  sky  by  the  powers  of  light  to  their  own 
struggles  with  the  coast  population  of  Asia  Minor.  The  myth  takes 
its  colouring  from  each  generation  that  repeats  it,  and  clothes  itself 
with  the  passions  and  the  interests  and  the  knowledge  of  the  men 
in  whose  mouths  it  lives  and  grows. 


PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION.  321 

(^poVo?).  Nothing  but  confusion  would  come  out 
of  such  a  comparison.  In  this  matter  we  have  to 
refer  to  history  wherever  this  is  possible,  and,  as 
in  the  case  of  the  later  Roman  mythology,  discover 
what  elements  have  been  imported  from  abroad  : 
where  it  is  impossible  to  do  this,  language  is  our 
only  guide.  Glottology  alone  can  warrant  us  in 
tracing  myths  to  the  same  origin,  and  Glottology 
also  must  inform  us  which  of  them  come  from  a 
foreign  source.  In  no  other  way,  for  instance, 
could  the  story  of  Melikertes,  the  Tyrian  Melkarth, 
be  traced  to  a  Semitic  derivation  ;  or,  on  the  other 
hand,  could  Minos  be  referred  to  the  Aryan  man 
and  ma?iu,  instead  of  being  coupled  with  the  Egyp- 
tian Menes,  "  the  founder  "  of  the  state.  It  may 
sometimes  be  difficult  to  detect  the  presence  of  an 
alien  myth :  like  borrowed  words  that  assume 
native  inflections,  the  borrowed  legend  may  clothe 
itself  in  a  familiar  form.  But  until  the  two  ele- 
ments are  separated,  the  comparative  mythologist 
is  not  certain  of  his  primary  facts.1 

1  The  story  of  the  Kyklops  in  the  Odyssey  is,  as  it  seems  to  me, 
an  instance  of  a  myth  which  has  been  borrowed  by  the  Aryans  from 
their  Turanian  neighbours  and  predecessors.  "W.  Grimm  [Abhand- 
lungen  d.  Akademie  d.  Wiss.  zu  Berlin,  1857),  in  an  article  on 
"The  Legend  of  Polyphemus,"  points  out  that  the  episode  of  the 
Kyklops,  while  forming  a  complete  whole  by  itself,  fits  awkwardly 
into  the  story  of  Odysseus,  and  varies  both  in  style  and  matter 
from  the  rest  of  the  Odyssey.  Thus  Odysseus  is  no  longer  the 
far-sighted  hero  of  epic  song,  but  a  foolhardy  and  cunning  trickster. 

X 


322  PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION. 

Again,  we  must  distinguish  from   the  myth  a 
£Ood  deal  that  is  often  confounded  with  it.      The 

Grimm  goes  on  to  point  out  that  similar  tales  exist  in  many  other 
parts  of  the  world.     The  one-eyed  giant,  who  lives  on  human  flesh, 
and  is  finally  blinded  by  a  hero  whom  he  entraps  into  his  cave,  but 
who  escapes  under  the  belly  of  a  sheep  or  ram  and  then  taunts  the 
monster,  reappears  among  the  Turkish-Tatar  Oghuzians,  where  he 
is  called  Depe  Ghoz  ("  eye-in -the-crown  "),  the  hero  being  Bissat 
(Diez  :  "  Der  neuentdeckte  Oghuzische  cyclop  verglichen  mit  d. 
homerischen,"  1815).     In  the  Servian  tale  (collected  by  Wuk  Ste- 
phauowitsch  Karadchitsch,   Iso.    38),  the  pupil  of  a  priest  plays 
the  part  of  Odysseus,  and  in  the  Finnish  (as  given  by  Bertram), 
Gylpho,  a  poor  groom.    In  the  latter  version  the  Kammo  or  Cyclops 
has  a  horn  in  addition  to  the  one  eye  in  the  forehead,  and  is  not  only 
blinded  but  put  to  death  (as  in  the  Oghuzian  version),  without,  how- 
ever, any  mention  being  made  of  the  hero's  escape  by  the  help  of  the 
sheep.    In  the  Karelian  legend  reported  by  Castren  ("Reseminnen 
fran  aren  1S3S-44,"  p.  87),  the  Cyclops  is  "humanised  "  by  having 
two  eyes  assigned  to  him,  one  of  which  is  blind  ;  and  the  Transyl- 
vanian  version  still  further  rationalises  the  myth  by  giving  the  giant 
two  sound  eyes,  which  are  both  destroyed  by  the  hero,  who  throws 
into  them  the  boiling  fat  of  his  two  elder  brothers.     In  this  version, 
as  in  the  Servian,  the  giant  is  finally  drowned.      "  The  Romance  of 
Dolopathos,"  translated  from  a  Latin  work  of  John  the  Monk  into 
French  verse  (about  1225),  which  Grimm  believes  to  have  been 
derived  from  the  East,  also  allows  the  giant  two  eyes ;   and,  an 
Esthonian  tale  found  in  Rosenpliintner  tells  how  a  thresher  blinded 
the  eyes  of  the  "  devil,"  under  the  pretext  of  curing  them,  and,  as 
in  the  Odyssey,  lost  him  the  sympathy  of  his  friends  by  giving  his 
own  name  as  Issi  or  "  Self."     In  the  Oghuzian,  Servian,  and  Tran- 
sylvani;m  versions,  as  well  as  in  the  legend  of  Dolopathos,  the 
Homeric  account  is  amplified  by  a  magic  ring  or  stall',  which  the 
Cyclops  presents  to  the  hero,  and  which  clings  to  the  lattex-'s  fiuger 
or  compels  him  to  shout  out,  "I  am  here."     This  part  of  the 
myth  has  apparently  been  rationalised  in  the  Odyssey.     Grimm 
further  quotes  a  similar  tale  from  the  Harz  (which  has  probably 
been  influenced   by  the  Homeric   one,   however),  and  the   third 
adventure  of  Sindbad  ;  and  alludes  to  the  Norwegian  stories  in 


PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION.  323 

myth  is  the  spontaneous  and  necessary  outcome  of 
the  young  mind,  which  takes  its  own  subjective 
fancies  as  the  true  objective  answers  to  the  ques- 
tions inspired  by  the  world  around  it.  Very 
different  are  the  conscious  and  deliberate  allegory 
and  fable,  which  generally  have  a  moral  intention, 
and  therefore  belong  to  the  period  of  religion.  In 
the  one  the  material  is  lifted  up  to  the  spiritual — 
it  is  an  effort  to  express  the  higher  yearnings  of 

which  a  maiden  escapes  from  a  witch  under  a  sheep's  fleece   and 
two  boys  meet  three  monstrous  trolls,  who  have  but  one  huge  and 
transferable  eye  between  them,  like  the  Graiai  of  iEskkylus.     M. 
Antoine  d'Abbadie  tells  me  of  a  similar  story  to  that  of  the  Kyklops 
which  he  met  with  among  the  Amharic-speaking  tribes  of  Abyssinia 
and  remarks,  that  though  a  man  with  one  eye  in  the  centre  of  his 
forehead  is  a  conceivable  monster,  the  escape  of  a  man  under  the 
belly  of  so  much  smaller  an  animal  as  a  sheep  is  an  inconceivable 
impossibility.     He  has  also  kindly  sent  me  an  account  of  the  Basque 
Tartarua  or  "  one-eyed  "  Cyclops.      This  monster  is  a  man-eater 
who  lives  in  a  cave,  and  is  challenged  by  one  of  three  brothers. 
The  latter  lops  off  one  of  the  arms  of  the  Kyklops,  and  renewing 
the  challenge  next  day,  lops  off  his  head,  then  kills  one  or  two 
other  Tartaruas,  fights  a  body  without  a  soul,  kills  it  and  delivers 
the  three  daughters  of  a  king.     He  kills  also  an  intelligent  eagle 
and  a  hare  ;  and  the  three  brothers  finally  marry  the  three  sisters. 
The  body  without  a  soul  reminds  us  of  the  Norse  story  of  "  The 
Giant  without  a  Heart  in  his  Body  "  (in  Dr  Dasent's  "Norse  Tales  " 
pp.  64  sq.),  which  reappears  in  Southern  India  (according  to  Miss 
Frere's  "  Old  Dekkan  Days  "),  as  well  as  in  the  Finnic  legend  written 
down  by  Castren  of  the  giant  who  kept  his  soul  in  a  snake  which 
he  carried  in  a  box  with  him  on  horseback,  or  in  the  Samoyede 
myth  of  the  seven  robbers  who  hung  up  their  hearts  on  a  peg  and 
were  destroyed  by  a  hero   (whose  mother  was  a  prisoner  among 
them),  with  the  help  of  a  Swan-maiden  whose  feather-dress  he  had 
stolen. 


324  PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION. 

the  soul  by  the  known  and  visible  things  of  sense  ; 
in  the  other,  the  spiritual  is  brought  down  to  be 
veiled  in  the  material.  The  allegory  is  the  product 
of  individual  invention,  designed  either  to  conceal 
the  higher  knowledge  of  the  initiated  from  the 
profane  gaze  of  the  unlearned,  or  to  explain  and 
bring  it  home  to  them  by  the  aid  of  metaphor. 
It  differs  from  the  fable  in  not  making  the  brute 
animals  the  mouthpiece  of  its  meaning.  The 
beast-fable  seems  to  be  one  of  the  earliest  creations 
of  the  awakening  consciousness.  It  was  known 
to  the  Egyptians  at  least  as  early  as  the  reign  of 
Ramses  III. ;  and"RenardtheFox"  has  its  analogue 
among  the  Kafirs.  Mr  MahafTy  conjectures  that 
Africa,  the  land  of  animal-worship,  was  its  original 
home;  and  he  mentions,  in  corroboration  of  this 
view,  that  the  first  essays  in  composition  made  by 
the  Vai-Negroes,  after  Doalu's  invention  of  a  sylla- 
bary, were  fables  about  beasts.1  At  any  rate,  beast- 
fables  were  peculiarly  appropriate  to  Egypt,  where 

1  "  Prolegomena  to  Ancient  History,"  p.  391.  The  suggestion, 
however,  does  not  seem  altogether  tenable.  Mr  G.  Smith  has 
recently  found  fragments  of  a  collection  of  beast-fables  which  be- 
longed to  a  certain  Assyrian  city.  One  of  them  is  a  dialogue 
between  the  ox  and  the  horse,  another  between  the  eagle  and  the 
sun.  It  is  difficult  to  suppose  that  this  collection  was  borrowed 
Erom  Egypt,  and  it  is  more  probable  that  the  beast-fable  was  the 
independent  creation  of  more  than  one  people.  It  would  be  the 
natural  form  of  political  satire  under  a  despotic  government.  The 
modern  gypsies  have  bea^t-fables  of  their  own,  which  cannot  be 
ascribed  to  any  foreign  source.     (See  Leland.) 


PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION.  325 

"  Oppida  tota  caneni  venerantur,  nemo  Dianam." 
Animals  live  and  move  like  ourselves,  and  yet 
between  us  and  them  lies  a  great  gulf,  which  we 
cannot  cross  to  discover  what  their  thoughts  and 
feelings  are.  The  primitive  races  of  men,  accord- 
ingly, regarded  them  with  awe  and  wonder; 
sometimes  they  were  the  sole  companions  of  the 
hunter  and  the  herdsman,  sometimes  they  were 
the  organs  of  departed  spirits  or  divine  beings — 
the  true  root  of  totemism  which  has  made  the 
Malayans  look  upon  the  orang-otang r,  or  "man  of  the 
woods,"  as  the  possessor  of  superhuman  wisdom.1 

1  I  cannot  believe  that  totemism  was  the  origin  of  beast-  or 
ancestor-worship,  much  less  of  fetichism  and  mythology,  except  so 
far  as  the  principle  of  reaction  came  into  play,  since  a  tribe  must 
have  had  some  semi-religious  reason  for  adopting  a  certain  object  or 
animal  as  its  badge  and  representative.  It  was  not  a  mere  symbol, 
like  the  figures  of  modern  heraldry,  but  a  mysterious  representative 
of  the  clan,  which  bound  it  together  like  the  common  ritual  of  a 
Roman  gens.  The  animal  was  sufficiently  on  a  level  with  man  to 
be  substituted  for  him  ;  but  it  was  also  sufficiently  divine  to  stand 
for  the  whole  community,  and  not  for  the  individual  alone.  To- 
temism, though  springing  from  the  same  root  as  mythology,  was 
powerless  to  effect  the  development  of  the  latter.  A  striking 
example  of  this  is  to  be  found  in  Dr  Brinton's  "Myths  of  the  New 
World"  (pp.  161  sq.),  where  an  account  is  given  of  Michabo, 
M  The  Great  Hare,"  whom  the  various  branches  of  the  Algonquin 
race,  from  Virginia  and  Delaware  to  the  Ottawas  of  the  north, 
regarded  as  their  ancestor.  "  The  totem,  or  clan,  which  bore  his 
name  was  looked  up  to  with  peculiar  respect."  But  Michabo,  like 
the  other  legislators  and  founders  of  America,  was  really  a  solar 
hero,  the  brother  of  the  snow,  who  had  his  home  on  the  verge  of 
the  east,  whence  he  sent  forth  the  luminaries  on  their  daily  jour- 
ney.     His   identification  with  the   hare   is   but  an   etymological 


326  PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION. 

Besides  allegory  and  fable,  another  kind  of 
fiction  has  to  be  distinguished  from  myth.  It  is 
not  necessary  to  mention  the  imaginary  chronicles 
of  medieval  monks,  whose  seclusion  from  the 
work-a-day  world  and  morbid  dwelling  upon  self 
brought  about  an  inability  to  separate  truth  from 
falsehood,  or  the  interested  inventions  of  patriots 
or  ciceroni.  But  writers,  more  especially  among 
the  Greeks,  have  in  all  good  faith  ascribed  epony- 
mous ancestors  to  tribes  and  races,  in  the  belief 
that  gentile  names  must  have  thus  originated,  and 
that  consequently  the  existence  of  £>opulations 
called  Hellenes  and  Assyrians  was  a  sufficient 
proof  of  a  Hellen  and  an  Asshur.  The  notion  has 
the  same  foundation  ultimately  as  the  myth  which 
arises  from  the  attempt  to  explain  the  signification 
of  a  forgotten  word  ;   and  when  once  it  has  become 

accident.  His  name  is  derived  from  vilchi,  "great,"  and  wabos, 
which,  though  it  means  "hare,"  properly  signifies  "white,"  whence 
come  numerous  words  for  "morning,"  "east,"  "  day,"  and  '"light." 
It  was  "  The  Great  White  One,"  therefore,  and  not  "The  Great 
Hare,"  from  whom  the  Algonquin  drew  his  descent.  The  selection 
of  the  hare  as  its  unifying  symbol  by  a  particular  tribe  was  due  to 
tho  feeling  which  saw  the  "mystery  of  divinity"  in  the  brute 
creation,  like  the  beast-worship  of  Africa  or  the  metempsychosis 
of  Indian  philosophy  ;  but  such  a  feeling  could  not  produce  a 
mythology — a  richer  and  wider  belief  was  needed  for  this.  (See, 
however,  Mr  H.  Spencer,  "Essays,"  iii.  4,  though  his  speculations 
are  based  on  the  wild  and  unscientific  theorising  of  Mr  M'Lennan 
in  his  articles  on  "The  Worship  of  Plants  and  Animals,"  i.  ii.  iii., 
Fortnightly  Review,  1S09,  1870.) 


PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION.  327 

popular,  and  lias  been  encrusted  with  the  floating 
mythology  of  the  people,  it  passes  into  a  genuine 
myth. 

Such,  then,  is  the  method,  and  such  are  the 
dangers,  of  our  new  science.  Already  have  con- 
clusions been  arrived  at  which  clear  up  this  obscure 
province  of  human  history,  and  enable  us  to  trace 
the  development  and  perversion  of  the  religious 
spirit.  In  these  researches,  Comparative  Myth- 
ology as  a  branch  of  Glottology,  cannot  dispense 
with  the  help  of  other  sciences,  more  particularly 
of  Ethnology.  The  latter  has  allowed  us  to  pene- 
trate back  into  the  very  roots  of  the  old  Theo- 
gonies.  We  learn  that  the  religious  instinct  first 
exhibits  itself  in  the  worship  of  dead  ancestors. 
Society  begins  with  a  hive-like  community,  the 
members  of  which  are  not  individually  marked 
out,  but  together  form  one  whole.  In  other  words, 
the  community,  and  not  the  individual,  lives  and 
acts.  But  the  community  does  not  comprise  the 
living  only  ;  the  dead  equally  form  part  of  it ;  and 
their  presence,  it  is  believed,  can  alone  account  for 
the  dreams  of  the  savage  or  the  pains  and  illnesses 
to  which  he  is  subject.  In  this  way  the  conception 
of  a  spiritual  world  takes  its  rise.  The  spiritual, 
however,  is  recognised  only  in  the  sensuous.  It 
is  a  sensible  image  or  a  sensible  feeling  which 
convinces  the  barbarian  of  the   existence  of  the 


328  PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION. 

supernatural.  The  spirits  are  but  part  and  parcel 
of  the  community  to  which  he  himself  belongs. 
There  is  no  difficulty  in  embodying  them  in  the 
objects  around  him.  In  his  dreams  they  appear 
to  him  in  corporeal  shape,  and  when  his  tooth 
aches  he  thinks  that  he  feels  the  gnawing  of  the 
malignant  ghost.  Hence  they  are  supposed  to 
take  up  their  habitation  in  animals  and  material 
things.  The  Hurons  believe  that  the  souls  of  the 
departed  turn  into  turtle-doves ;  and  the  Zulrs 
consider  certain  green  and  brown  harmless  snakes 
to  be  their  ancestors,  and  accordingly  offer  them 
sacrifices.  In  fact,  all  serpent-worship  has  had 
this  origin :  the  serpent  that  crawled  along  the 
ground,  and  was  thought  to  eat  dust,  seeming 
peculiarly  fitted  to  be  the  representative  of  the 
buried  corpse.  "  Serpens  Libavitque  dapes,  rur- 
susque  innoxius  imo  Successit  tumulo,  et  depasta 
altaria  liquit."  The  Pythagorean  saying  that  the 
human  marrow  after  death  was  changed  into  a 
serpent,  is  but  a  later  form  of  the  old  idea  ;  and 
the  Accadian  god  of  the  house,  as  well  as  of  cities 
and  wisdom,  who  was  symbolised  by  the  snake,  was 
primarily  the  earth,  reminding  us  of  the  answer  of 
the  Telmessians  to  Krcesus,  o$iv  elvcu  y/79  ircuha. 
The  ascription  of  spiritual  existence  to  material 
objects  was  from  the  first  inevitable  among  those 
who  had  not  yet  attained  individual  and  subjective 


PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION.  329 

consciousness.  Objects  equally  with  persons  ap- 
peared iu  dreams,  and  it  was  the  ghost  of  the  food 
that  was  offered,  and  the  ghost  of  the  flint- weapon 
that  was  buried,  which  delighted  the  dead  and 
supported  him  in  the  spirit-land.  As  yet  there 
was  no  distinction  between  the  form  and  its  con- 
tent. Now  the  cause  of  the  worship  paid  to  the 
spirit,  and,  in  short,  of  any  recollection  of  him  at 
all,  was  fear  or  the  desire  of  food.  Terrified  by 
dreams,  or  tormented  by  disease,  the  savage  would 
try  to  appease  the  angry  ghost,  while  the  sole 
source  of  a  continuous  cult  was  the  appetite.  It 
was  to  obtain  the  needful  supply  of  food  that  the 
daily  sacrifice  was  made  and  the  daily  prayer  ad- 
dressed. It  was  the  animal  wants  of  early  man 
that  kept  the  light  of  the  religious  instinct  unex- 
tinguished. When,  therefore,  the  conception  of  the 
spiritual  had  passed  from  mere  ancestor-worship, 
mere  adoration  of  one's  own  bodily  feelings,  to 
the  second  stage  of  object-worship,  those  objects 
which  directly  influenced  the  acquisition  of  food 
would  receive  the  principal  homage.  Fetichism, 
by  localising  the  spiritual,  instead  of  leaving  the 
remembrance  of  it  to  the  chance  of  a  dream  or  an 
illness,  first  made  it  possible  to  select  the  objects 
which  were  to  be  accounted  divine,  and  to  remind 
the  worshipper  of  his  religious  duties  by  having 
his  gods  perpetually  before   his   eyes.      But   the 


330  PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION. 

religious  ground  and  kernel  of  fetichism  is  the  cult 
of  the  deceased  forefathers  of  the  community. 

With  fetichism,  the  germs  of  a  mythology  make 
their  appearance.  The  objects  worshipped  are,  as 
I  have  said,  those  upon  which  the  satisfaction  of 
hunger  mainly  depends.  The  arrow,  the  spear, 
the  harpoon,  the  fruit-tree,  such  are  the  gods  of  the 
lower  races.  Their  investiture  with  independent 
life  shows  that  man  is  still  in  the  infantile  staire 
in  which  the  object  and  the  subject  are  confounded 
together.  Human  action  is  attributed  to  the  in- 
animate, and  the  work  of  the  hands  is  described  in 
lano'ua^e  as  effecting  all  those  results  which  we 
now  predicate  of  nature. 

When  once,  however,  human  action  has  been 
transferred  to  an  inanimate  object,  a  number  of 
phrases  have  been  stereotyped  in  language  which  will 
survive  into  an  advanced  condition  of  knowledge. 
Ceasing  to  represent  the  knowledge  of  the  day,  they 
will  create  an  ideal  world,  illuminated  by  tradi- 
tional reverence  and  the  halo  of  divinity  ;  and  thus 
the  foundations  of  a  mythology  are  laid.  So  the 
marvellous  Sampo  of  the  Finnic  Kalewala  is  the 
last  relic  of  a  time  when  the  quern  was  invested 
with  the  attributes  of  religious  sanctity.  Unques- 
tionably, however,  myths  which  go  back  to  the 
period  of  fetichism  are  rare.  It  rather  survives  in 
the  symbols  which  are  attached  to  different  divini- 


PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION.  331 

ties,  in  the  wand  of  Hermes  and  the  arrows  of 
Apollo,  or  in  the  refined  conceptions  of  Agnis, 
"the  fire,"  and  Hestia,  "the  hearth."  The  period 
of  fetichism  was  not  one  in  which  the  capabilities 
of  lanoTias:e  were  much  tried  :  the  savage  was  still 

O  O  JO 

chary  of  his  words,  and  unconcerned  at  the  loss  of 
old  ones,  while  the  verbal  idea  of  action  was  still 
struggling  to  express  itself.  But  out  of  fetichism 
came  a  higher  order  of  things.  Through  the  me- 
dium of  conceptions  like  that  of  "  fire,"  primitive 
man  transferred  his  religious  associations  from  the 
objects  which  his  own  fingers  had  wrought,  or 
which  lay  immediately  about  him,  to  those  whose 
nature  he  could  not  explain,  whose  working  he 
could  not  influence,  and  whose  power  he  himself 
had  felt.  The  bright  vault  of  heaven,  the  toiling 
sun,  the  raging  thunderstorm,  these  were  now  his 
gods.  The  old  motive  that  drove  him  to  select  his 
deities  was  still  strong ;  the  divine  beings  that  he 
honoured  were  those  that  seemed  to  give  him  his 
daily  food  or  to  withold  it  when  they  were  angry. 
The  feelings  of  terror  once  inspired  by  the  appear- 
ance of  the  departed  in  sleep  were  now  confined  to 
the  gods  of  night,  whose  subterranean  abodes  well 
agreed  with  the  sepulchres  of  the  dead.  It  was  only 
in  dreams  that  these  could  afflict  him  ;  they  could 
not  bring  the  prey  or  nourish  the  plants  on  which 
he  lived  ;  and  consequently  the   worship  that  he 


332  PHILOLOGY  AND  HELIGI0N. 

paid  them  was  forced  and  scanty.  It  was  the 
brightness  of  the  day  and  the  sun,  and  more  espe- 
cially of  the  dawn,  when  man  goeth  forth  to  his 
labour  and  his  search  for  food,  that  absorbed 
almost  all  his  religious  care.  As  Yon  Halm  has 
acutely  remarked,1  the  small  part  played  by  the 
moon  in  mythology  is  in  great  measure  due  to  the 
little  share  it  has  in  providing  for  human  neces- 
sities. To  the  sun,  on  the  contrary,  the  mainstay 
of  life,  the  altar  smoked  and  the  hymn  ascended. 
Man  was  content  not  to  look  for  his  gods  beyond 
the  atmosphere,  beyond  the  space  between  the  earth 
and  the  sky,  since  here  alone  were  to  be  found  the 
powers  which  enabled  him  to  live  and  be  conscious 
of  a  higher  existence. 

But  the  instincts  that  underlay  fetichism  were 
only  transferred  to  less  coarse  and  unintelligent 
objects.  There  was  a  worship  of  nature  instead 
of  stocks  and  stones.  The  old  confusion  between 
object  and  subject  was  still  present,  the  old  childish 
ignorance  that  had  fixed  its  religious  intuition  in 
lifeless  things.  The  new  gods,  therefore,  were 
endowed  with  human  action ;  and  when  men  came 
to  be  more  self-conscious  and  informed,  they  found 
their  language  teeming  with  expressions  which 
could  only  be  explained  by  remembering  that  the 
phenomena  of  the  atmosphere  had  once  been  divine 

1  "  Sagwisseuschaftliche  Studien,"  p.  92. 


PHILOLOGY  AND   RELIGION.  333 

beings  whose  actions  were  the  actions  of  men. 
But  this  had  been  forgotten  ;  and  so  there  grew  up 
an  ever-increasing  mythology.  As  the  old  names 
and  phrases  became  more  and  more  obscure,  popu- 
lar etymologies  were  invented  to  account  for  them, 
and  Prometheus,  the  pramantkas  or  fire-chark  of 
the  ancient  Aryan,  crystallised  into  the  wise  re- 
presentative of  forethought,  who  stole  the  fire  of 
heaven  for  suffering  but  finally  victorious  humanity. 
Mythology,  however,  had  no  past,  just  as  it  had  no 
future.  It  came  down  from  a  period  when  the  verb 
had  not  yet  realised  the  idea  of  time,  and  when 
the  substantives  which  denoted  the  individual  ob- 
jects still  served  to  express  also  both  action  and 
will.  The  labours  of  the  sun  were  the  same  day 
after  day ;  there  was  no  tense  to  describe  them 
except  the  aorist. 

It  is  obvious  that  what  we  have  called  the  Epi- 
thet ic  Stage  of  language  would  have  been  the  most 
fruitful  soil  for  the  birth  of  mythology.  An  epi- 
thet is  necessarily  a  metaphor,  implying  action  ; 
and  when  we  call  the  moon  "  the  measurer,"  we 
at  once  personify  it,  that  is,  ascribe  to  it  the 
action  of  a  man.  But  not  only  was  there  thus 
from  the  first  a  mythic  element  introduced  ;  the 
epithet,  being  equally  applicable  to  a  variety  of 
objects,  would  tend  to  confuse  their  qualities  toge- 
ther, and  when  one  special  application  of  it  was 


334  PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION. 

preserved  through  religious  sanctity  as  a  mere 
name,  all  the  original  meaning  and  reference  being 
lost,  a  number  of  incongruous  attributes,  derived 
from  other  applications,  would  be  associated  with 
it.  In  fact,  in  proportion  as  a  community  has 
advanced  towards  the  epithetic  stage,  the  mytho- 
logical wealth  of  its  language  is  large.  Myths  are 
the  traditional  relics  of  the  way  in  which  primitive 
man  confounded  his  own  subjective  sense  of  power 
with  the  objects  which  animal  needs  had  led  him 
to  consecrate  as  gods,  as  well  as  of  the  attempts 
made  to  explain  them  when  the  state  of  society 
and  knowledge  which  had  produced  them  was 
changed.  They  rested  upon  the  religious  instinct, 
and  it  was  this  that  saved  them  from  perishing. 

The  results  of  Comparative  Mythology  have  not 
escaped  misconception  and  objection.  It  is  no 
doubt  hard  for  those  who  have  been  brought  up  to 
regard  the  myth  as  a  corruption  of  revelation  or 
a  perversion  of  an  historical  fact  or  a  sacerdotal 
allegory  to  disabuse  themselves  of  their  belief.  It 
is  harder  for  those  who  have  been  accustomed  to 
hunt  for  fragments  of  history  in  the  mythology  of 
a  nation,  under  the  guidance  of  a  special  divination, 
to  acquiesce  in  the  decisions  of  a  study  which  de- 
clares that  all  such  labour  is  in  vain,  that  myth  is 
to  uncultivated  man  what  history  is  to  us,  and  that 
any  historical  references  that  may  be  imbedded  in 


PHILOLOGY  AND  KELIGION.  335 

it  can  only  be  discovered  from  ordinary  historical 
sources.  The  method,  however — that  of  compari- 
son— by  which  these  conclusions  are  obtained  is 
the  method  of  science,  and,  if  properly  carried  out, 
can  alone  lead  us  to  scientific  truth  ;  but  it  must 
not  be  held  responsible  for  the  rash  statements  of 
over-hasty  disciples,  who  are  not  contented  with 
the  restrictions  imposed  by  our  evidence.  Just  as 
we  shall  never  be  able  to  give  the  derivation  of 
every  word  in  the  dictionary,  so  we  shall  never  be 
able  to  explain  every  individual  myth,  and  the 
endeavour  to  do  so  necessarily  brings  discredit 
upon  the  conclusions  arrived  at  on  sufficient  data. 
We  must  be  content  with  general  rules  and  the 
explanation  of  the  larger  number  of  myths.  The 
two  chief  objections,  however,  raised  against  the 
results  are,  on  the  one  side,  that  they  presuppose 
in  primitive  man  too  high  an  imagination,  and, 
on  the  other  side,  that  they  ascribe  to  him  too 
feeble  an  imagination.  We  might  leave  these 
mutually  destructive  statements  to  neutralise  one 
another,  but  it  is  better  to  clear  up  the  misunder- 
standings upon  which  they  are  based.  We  are 
told,  then,  on  the  one  hand,  that  to  believe  that 
our  barbarian  ancestors  were  always  busied  in 
describing  the  wonders  of  the  dawn  and  the  daily 
progress  of  the  sun  through  the  sky  in  richly 
poetical  metaphors  is  simply  absurd.     The  country 


336  PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION. 

boor  is  blind  to  the  beauties  of  nature,  and  the 
savage  cares  only  for  his  selfish  animal  lusts. 
But  it  is  precisely  the  latter  fact  which  solves  the 
difficulty.  It  was  just  because  the  dawn  and  the 
sun  and  the  fire  seemed  to  provide  him  with  the 
food  which  he  needed,  that  primitive  man  regarded 
them  as  his  gods,  and  invested  them  with  human 
power.  The  poetical  dress  which  has  been  thrown 
over  them  is  a  necessity  of  language.  Poetry  con- 
sists in  metaphor,  personification,  and  terseness, 
and  all  these  were  the  inevitable  characteristics  of 
early  speech,  when  the  spiritual  could  only  be 
understood  through  the  sensuous,  and  when  object 
and  subject  were  inextricably  blended  together. 
It  is  scientific  language  that  is  furthest  removed 
from  poetry ;  the  savage  still  talks  in  poetic  me- 
taphor, and  the  earliest  compositions  are  in  verse. 
The  rhythm  that  underlies  the  myth  is  the  lyric 
rhythm  of  speech — the  most  exquisite  of  all  music  ; 
and  the  deep  insight  that  pervades  it  is  the 
naive  simplicity  of  childlike  humanity,  and  the 
religious  conviction  which  it  would  express.  As 
for  the  contrary  objection,  that  our  forefathers 
could  not  have  had  such  a  poverty  of  ideas  as  to 
confine  all  their  attention  to  the  phenomena  of 
the  atmosphere,  it  is  answered  by  the  same  consi- 
d<  ration,  that  the  choice  of  the  objects  of  mytho- 
logy was  dictated  by  the  circumstances  in  which 


PHILOLOGY  AND  EELIGION.  337 

the  first  men  were  placed.  We  do  not  find  that 
the  range  of  ideas  possessed  by  the  modern  savage 
is  very  great,  and  the  very  growth  of  mythology 
implies  that  the  imagination  increased  with  chang- 
ing conditions.  That  the  elements  were  only 
modified,  enlarged,  and  combined,  but  not  added 
to,  is  due  to  the  religions  core  to  which  mythology 
owed  its  preservation.  Indeed,  without  the  reli- 
gious instinct,  mythology  would  have  had  no 
existence  at  all ;  it  originated  not  in  the  imagi- 
nation of  the  poet,  but  in  the  requirements  of 
worship.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  the  asser- 
tions of  the  comparative  mythologist,  whether 
likely  or  unlikely,  are  no  subjective  theory,  but  the 
plain  reading  of  the  evidence  before  us.  In  many 
cases,  at  least,  the  Rig- Veda,  our  earliest  Aryan 
monument,  does  show  that  a  Greek  legend  had  a 
solar  origin ;  and  so  long  as  we  keep  to  our  data, 
we  can  find  nothing  to  support  us  in  tracing  back 
our  European  mythology  to  anything  else  than 
atmospheric  phenomena.  If  there  wrere  any  pri- 
mitive myths  of  a  different  derivation,  we  have  no 
means  left  of  detecting  them.  ISTor  is  it  in  the 
Aryan  family  alone  that  the  same  conclusion  is 
necessitated,  although  the  inflective  character  of 
the  language  and  the  extensive  development  of  the 
epithetic  stage  would  lead  us  to  expect  to  meet 
with  more  mythology  here   than   anywhere   else. 

Y 


338  PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION. 

The  myths  of  other  races,  wherever  their  meaning 
is  transparent  enough,  wherever  the  proper  names 
are  capable  of   analysis,  are  all  atmospheric  and 
celestial.      Thus    the    Eskimaux   have    a    legend 
about  the  moon,  how  he  met  a  girl  in  a  dark  hut 
at  a  festive  gathering,  and  declared  his   love  by 
shaking  her   shoulders.     She   smeared   her   hand 
with  soot  and  marked  him  ;  but  when  a  light  was 
brought   she  found  it  was  her  brother,  and  fled 
ever  pursued  by  him  through  the  sky,  where  the 
moon  is  always  chasing  the  sun  with  a  dark  spot 
upon  his  blackened  cheek.      The  Assyrians,  again, 
borrowing  apparently  from  their  Accadian  prede- 
cessors, told   how   All  at  or    Astarte,   "  queen   of 
heaven,  with  crescent  horns,"  descended  from  the 
sky  through  the  seven  gates  of  Hades,  leaving  at 
each  some  one  of  her  adornments — her  earrings, 
her  necklace,  her  girdle,  her  anklets — so  that  at 
last  she  reached  the  land  of  the  dead,  where  the 
sun  of  winter  was  sleeping,  stripped  and   empty ; 
to  return  again,  however,  and  receive  back  at  each 
gate  the  ornaments  she  had  left  behind.      No  one 
can  fail  to  see  here  the  waning  and  waxing  moon, 
any  more  than  to  understand  how  the  sun-god  can 
be  addressed  in  an  old  Babylonian  hymn  as  the 
opener  of  the  bright  locks  of  heaven.1 

1  The  more  I  examine  the  mythology  of  the  ancient  non-Semitic 
population  of  Babylonia,  the  more  clearly  does  the  solar  origin  of 


PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION.  339 


The  last  two  arguments  urged  against  the  scien- 
tific interpretation  of  mythology  are,  firstly,  the 
elastic  limits  and  vague  and  general  characteristics 
assigned  to  the  myth ;  and,  secondly,  the  narrow 
local  restrictions  to  which  it  is  often  subject.  It 
is  said  that  any  story  of  life  and  death  and  mar- 
riage, any  tale  in  which  the  hero  migrates  from 
east  to  west,  ought,  upon  the  theory,  to  be  admitted 

the  larger  part  of  it  appear.  Thanks  to  the  agglutinative  character 
of  the  language,  the  proper  names  are  always  transparent,  and  so,  in 
spite  of  the  strange  transformations  which  the  various  divinities 
have  undergone,  carry  their  primitive  meaning  and  nature  upon  the 
face  of  them.  But  it  is  not  only  the  long-buried  records  of  old 
civilisations  that  are  rising  up,  as  it  were,  to  confirm  the  conclusions 
of  Comparative  Mythology  ;  the  self-evident  myths  of  modern  bar- 
barians all  tell  the  same  tale.  A  typical  instance  is  the  charming 
legend  of  the  Esthonians,  which  Professor  Max  Miiller  has  given  in 
his  "  Introduction  to  the  Science  of  Religion,"  pp.  3S6-S9.  "  Wanna 
Issi,"  it  relates,  "had  two  servants,  Koit  and  Ammarik,  and  he 
gave  them  a  torch  which  Koit  should  light  every  morning,  and 
Ammarik  should  extinguish  in  the  evening.  In  order  to  reward 
their  faithful  services,  Wanna  Issi  told  them  they  might  be  man 
and  wife,  but  they  asked  Wanna  Issi  that  he  would  allow  them  to 
remain  for  ever  bride  and  bridegroom.  Wanna  Issi  assented,  and 
henceforth  Koit  handed  the  torch  every  evening  to  Ammarik,  and 
Ammarik  took  it  and  extinguished  it.  Only  during  four  weeks  in 
Bummer  they  remain  together  at  midnight;  Koit  hands  the  dying 
torch  to  Ammarik,  but  Ammarik  does  not  let  it  die,  but  lights  it 
again  with  her  breath.  Then  their  hands  are  stretched  out,  and 
their  lips  meet,  and  the  blush  of  the  face  of  Ammarik  '  colours  the 
midnight  sky.'  "  The  significance  of  the  myth  would  be  plain,  even 
if  we  did  not  know  that  Wanna  Issi  in  Esthonian  means  "  the  old 
father,"  Koit  "the  dawn,"  and  Ammarik  "the  gloaming."  The 
New  Zealand  stories  of  Maui,  the  sun-god,  which  will  be  found  in 
Tylor's  "  Primitive  Culture,"  pp.  302,  309,  are  quite  equal  to  any 
of  the  mythological  products  of  the  Aryan  mind. 


340  PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION. 

into  the  circle  of  solar  myths.  In  fact,  so  general 
are  the  features  which  are  attributed  to  the  myth, 
that  it  is  possible  to  transmute  any  individual 
whatsoever  into  an  image  of  the  sun,  just  as  Arch- 
bishop Whateley  banished  the  great  Napoleon  to 
the  realm  of  fable.  But  all  this  proceeds  upon 
the  mistaken  assumption  that  it  is  only  necessary 
to  compare  two  legends  together  to  determine 
their  character.  On  the  contrary,  a  scientific  com- 
parison must  conform  to  all  the  rules  of  the  spe- 
cial science  ;  and  since  Comparative  Mythology  is 
but  a  branch  of  Glottology,  we  must  not  advance 
one  step  without  the  safeguard  of  language.  Hcr- 
akles  is  the  sun,  not  only  because  his  life  and 
labours  are  those  of  other  solar  heroes,  but  also 
because  his  own  name  discloses  his  origin  from 
swara,  "  the  splendour  of  heaven,"  like  the  names 
of  those  with  whom  he  comes  in  contact — Angelas, 
Deianeira,  lole — in  his  struggles  and  in  his  death. 
The  second  objection  is  even  less  plausible.  When 
it  is  asked  why  the  story,  for  instance,  of  Ke- 
plialos  and  Prokris,  the  rising  sun  and  the  dew- 
drop,  should  have  been  so  local  in  character  that 
no  allusion  to  it  appears  before  the  time  of  Apol- 
lodorus  and  Ovid,  we  can  only  reply,  why  is  it 
that  so  many  old  words  are  utterly  obliterated  in 
the  language  of  the  country,  and  yet  crop  up  in 
these  latter  days  of  linguistic  research  in  obscure 


PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION.  341 

provincial  dialects  ?  Our  good  old  English  laik, 
"to  play,"  only  lurks  now  in  the  corners  of  the 
northern  counties,  just  as  many  a  myth  of  pre- 
Homeric  Greece  survived  in  the  mouths  of  illite- 
rate peasants,  to  be  discovered  and  recorded  in 
the  days  of  court  dilettanti  and  antiquarian  book- 
makers. 

When  once  the  question  of  mythology  has  been 
settled,  we  can  proceed  to  the  comparative  science 
of  religions,  or,  if  we  might  coin  a  word,  of  Dog- 
matology.  What  we  have  to  do  here  is  to  com- 
pare and  classify  the  various  religious  systems 
that  have  prevailed  in  the  world,  and  to  trace 
their  connection,  origin,  and  development.  It  is, 
of  course,  only  the  external  form  and  shell  with 
which  we  are  concerned  ;  the  religious  spirit  which 
inspires  them  must  be  left,  as  in  mythology,  to 
other  students.  We  have  nothing  to  do  with  the 
truth  or  falsehood  of  particular  religions  ;  that  is 
a  point  which  must  be  handed  over  to  the  theo- 
logian. Nor  is  it  our  business  to  ascertain  the 
history  of  a  special  creed,  and  the  unfolding  of  its 
dogmas  ;  the  quarrels  of  Catholics  and  Arians, 
the  disputes  of  Nestorius  and  St  Cyril,  are  of 
little  consequence  to  us  ;  what  we  want  are  the 
general  results,  just  as  Glottology  makes  use  of 
materials  provided  by  the  specialists  in  each  lan- 
guage.     Still  less   have  we  to  deal  with  the   bio- 


342  PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION. 

graphies  of  religious  founders  or  reformers ;  for 
all  that  Dogmatology  requires,  they  may  be  mythic 
personages.  It  is  the  ideas,  or  rather  the  forms 
of  the  ideas,  which  they  utilised  and  arranged, 
and  the  way  in  which  these  were  afterward  modi- 
fied and  added  to,  that  have  an  interest  for  us. 
As  in  most  cases  we  can  arrive  at  these  only  by 
the  aid  of  language,  the  science  of  religions  will 
need  the  control  of  Glottology  as  much  as  does 
Comparative  Mythology.  As  yet  the  science  of 
religions  has  made  but  little  progress.  "We  are 
still  engaged  in  collecting  materials,  in  learning 
to  read  the  sacred  books  of  the  East,  and  to 
ascertain  what  it  is  they  have  to  tell  us.  Never- 
theless certain  general  outlines,  within  which  the 
conclusions  of  the  new  science  will  have  to  be 
comprehended,  have  already  been  sketched.  We 
have  come  to  see  that  religious  systems  and  their 
development  are  obedient  to  general  laws  like 
everything  else,  and  that  each  race  of  men  has 
shaped  its  system  in  a  manner  of  its  own.  The 
isolating  Chinese  differs  in  his  form  of  creed  from 
the  inflection-using  Aryan  and  Semite,  and  these, 
a  Grain,  carrv  out  their  religious  ideas  in  a  different 
way ;  but  a  general  likeness  is  to  be  observed 
between  the  latter.  As  Buddhism  and  Zoroas- 
t nanism  have  come  forth  from  the  bosom  of 
Brahmanisin,   so  have    Christianity   and   Moham- 


PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION.  343 

medanism  from  Judaism;  and  just  as  Buddha 
preached  the  equality  of  men,  in  contradistinc- 
tion to  the  aristocratic  creed  of  Manu,  so  the 
exclusiveness  of  the  Jew  has  given  place  to  the 
universality  of  Christianity ;  while  the  prophet  of 
the  Avesta  was  not  less  clear  in  his  sharply-cut 
dualism,  out  of  which  Monotheism  was  to  spring 
by  the  absorption  of  good  into  evil,  than  was  the 
prophet  of  the  Koran  in  his  doctrine  of  one  God. 
Indeed,  Buddhism  and  Christianity  present  closer 
analogies  than  that  of  mere  derivation.  Just  as 
Sakya  Muni  appeared  about  600  years  before  the 
birth  of  Christ,  so  did  Mohammed  about  GOO 
years  after  that  event :  300  years  after  its  insti- 
tution, Buddhism  was  made  the  state  religion  by 
the  powerful  monarch  Asoka,  by  whose  orders  a 
general  council  was  convened  to  settle  matters  of 
faith  and  discipline,  just  as  Constantine  was  con- 
verted, and  the  Council  of  Nikrea  assembled  by 
him,  a.d.  325.  The  monasteries  of  Christendom 
rind  their  parallel  in  the  monasteries  of  Buddhism, 
the  Pope  of  Rome  in  the  Lama  of  Tibet ;  and 
the  image- worship,  the  proxy-prayers,  and  the 
elaborate  ceremonial  of  the  medieval  Church 
are  not  more  unlike  the  divine  morality  of  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount  than  are  the  adoration 
of  relics,  the  praying  machines,  and  the  rites  of 
the    Buddhist  hierarchy  unlike    the    simple  code 


344  PHILOLOGY  AND  RELIGION. 

of  morals  and  life  which  their  founder  bequeathed 
to  them.1 

Much  that  is  now  dark  in  dogma  may  be  cleared 
up  with  the  advance  of  our  comparative  researches. 
Here,  as  elsewhere,  it  will  be  found  that  we  in- 
herit the  forgotten  beliefs  of  our  forefathers.  The 
words,  the  phrases,  the  practices  have  descended 
to  us  from  the  past,  but  we  have  put  into  them  a 
new  spirit  and  a  new  meaning.  The  founder  of 
a  religion,  however  great  he  may  be,  however 
much,  as  his  disciples  believe,  a  prophet  of  God,  or 
even  God  himself,  has  yet  to  deal  with  men.  He 
must  work  upon  the  ideas  current  in  his  age  ;  and 
though  he  may  give  them  a  fresh  direction,  still 
their  comprehension  and  carrying  out  will  be 
limited  by  the  intellectual  knowledge  of  the  reci- 
pients. And  as  this  will  vary  from  generation  to 
generation,  so  will  the  ideas  themselves  vary,  and 
catch  the  colour  of  each  succeeding  century. 

1  Professor  Max  Midler,  in  his  charming  "Lectures  on  the  Science 
of  Religion"  (p.  105),  adds  another  parallelism  between  the  two 
religions  : — "Buddhism  being  at  its  birth  an  Aryan  religion,  ended 
by  becoming  the  principal  religion  of  the  Turanian  world/'  just  as 
"Christianity,  the  offspring  of  Mosaism,  \v;i^  rejected  by  the  Jews, 
as  Buddhism  was  by  the  Lrahmans,  .  .  .  and  became  the  principal 
religion  of  the  Aryan  world." 


LI 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE   INFLUENCE   OF  ANALOGY   IN   LANGUAGE. 

The  phenomena  of  phonetic  decay  are  among  the 
first  to  attract  the  notice  of  the  student  of  language. 
They  show  themselves,  as  it  were,  upon  the  surface 
of  speech ;  they  force  themselves  upon  the  atten- 
tion ;  and  the  slow  and  gradual  change  that  goes 
on  in  language,  seems,  at  first  sight,  to  be  due  to 
them  alone.  The  wear  and  tear  of  words  and  their 
meanings,  which  is  continually  taking  place,  how- 
ever little  perceived  by  the  passing  generation,  is 
like  the  wasting  of  the  rocks  by  air,  and  water, 
and  ice,  that,  through  the  long  series  of  geological 
ages,  has  piled  up  the  crust  of  the  earth,  scooping 
out  the  valleys  and  moulding  the  everlasting  hills. 
And  just  as  this  constant  process  of  destruction 
has  blotted  out  myriads  of  intermediate  links 
between  successive  forms  of  life,  bringing  about 
the  so-called  imperfection  of  the  geologic  record, 
so,  in  language,  the  action  of  phonetic  decay  has 
left  us  but  waifs  and  strays  of  former  states  of 
speech,   and  obliterated  words   and  forms   which 


340      THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE. 

alone  can  explain  the  origin  of  what  is  left,  or 
affiliate  languages  one  to  the  other.  It  is  not 
wonderful,  therefore,  that  phonetic  decay  has  as- 
sumed an  exaggerated  importance  in  the  eyes  of 
philologists,  or  even  been  brought  forward  to  the 
exclusion  of  all  other  principles  which  affect  lin- 
guistic growth.  Its  very  name,  however,  shows 
that  it  cannot  he  a  principle  of  universal  appli- 
cation. Phonology  is  but  a  subordinate  part  of 
Comparative  Philology,  dealing  at  most  with  its 
material,  not  with  its  content.  And  though,  in 
philology,  material  and  content  can  only  be  arbi- 
trarily separated  one  from  the  other  for  the  pur- 
poses of  scientific  analysis,  inasmuch  as  language 
is  but  the  outward  expression  of  thought,  yet  a 
principle  which  primarily  deals  with  the  external 
alone  must  be  of  limited  and  not  general  range. 
In  fact,  when  we  come  to  look  closely  into  the 
matter,  we  shall  find  that  phonetic  decay  is  largely 
influenced  by  another  and  wider  principle,  that  of 
Analogy.  This  is  a  main  element  of  change  in 
the  signification  as  well  as  in  the  outward  form 
of  words  ;  and  just  as  phonetic  decay  wastes  and 
destroys,  so  analogy  repairs  and  reconstructs.  The 
one  is  the  agent  of  destruction,  the  other  of  con- 
struction, though  they  both  spring  from  the  same 
root  of  human  laziness. 

One  of  the  most  important  of  the  functions  of 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE.      347 

analogy  is  the  production  of  a  new  grammar. 
Grammar  is  not  only  the  skeleton  of  a  language, 
but  the  very  life-blood  of  it  as  well,  and  the 
changes  that  take  place  in  it  are  in  large  measure 
occasioned  by  the  agency  of  analogy.  But  ana- 
logy may  be  either  false  or  true  ;  indeed,  in  the 
history  of  speech  we  shall  see  that  false  analogy 
lias  as  often  been  at  work  as  true.  A  large  num- 
ber of  feminine  nouns  in  French,  like  etude  and 
voile,  have  arisen  from  the  mistaken  comparison 
of  the  plural  neuter  ending  in  -a  with  the  similar 
termination  of  the  singular  of  the  first  Latin  de- 
clension. And  so,  as  the  majority  of  the  sub- 
stantives belonging  to  this  declension  were  femi- 
nine, mind  and  ear  came  to  associate  the  idea  of 
the  feminine  so  closely  with  the  termination  -a  as 
to  assign  that  gender  to  all  words  whatsoever  which 
ended  with  this  particular  vowel.  The  instinct 
here  led  to  a  false  conclusion ;  that  is  to  say,  it 
ignored  the  true  history  and  significance  of  certain 
linguistic  forms  ;  and  this  confusion  and  violation 
of  the  regular  historical  development  of  speech  is 
all  that  is  meant  by  the  philologist  when  he  speaks 
of  the  false  in  language. 

But  analogy  does  not  act  upon  forms  alone. 
Both  matter  and  form  are  alike  subject  to  its 
influence.  While,  on  the  one  hand,  the  relations 
of  grammar,  the  rules  of  syntax,  and  the  content 


34 S      THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE. 

and  meaning  of  words  grow  changed  and  altered 
by  its  subtle  operation,  the  external  shape  and 
character  of  the  vocabulary,  on  the  other  hand, 
also  becomes  insensibly  transformed.  ISTo  doubt 
the  two  processes  of  change  go  on,  for  the  most 
part,  side  by  side,  since  we  cannot,  except  on  paper, 
separate  the  inner  essence  of  a  word  from  the 
material  in  which  it  is  expressed  ;  but  there  is  no 
more  fatal  error  than  to  assume  that  a  new  con- 
ception or  a  new  grammatical  relation  can  arise 
out  of  mere  phonetic  change.  They  are  due  to 
analogy,  not  to  phonetic  decay.  It  was  not  the 
neo-Latin  pronunciation  and  external  form  of 
voile  that  caused  it  to  be  feminine,  but  the  fact 
that  a  particular  external  form  had  already  been 
appropriated  to  the  feminine  gender  in  a  pre- 
ponderant number  of  instances.  The  inward  in 
language,  as  in  other  things,  cannot  be  originated 
by  the  outward,  however  much  the  outward  may  be 
originated  by  the  inward.  It  was  to  be  a  vehicle 
for  internal  thought  that  language  first  came  into 
existence ;  and  the  popular  etymologies,  which 
modify  the  outward  form  of  a  word  in  order  to 
harmonise  it  with  an  intelligible  idea,  still  bear 
testimony  to  this. 

Now  the  principle  of  analogy  may  be  ultimately 
traced  partly  to  the  desire  of  saving  trouble,  partly 
to  the  natural  instinct  of  imitation.      It  is  easier 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE.       349 

for  the  vocal  organs  to  repeat  the  same  sound  than 
to  attempt  a  new  one,  while  the  repetition  of  the 
same  idea,  or  the  expression  of  an  analogous  one, 
involves  less  exertion  on  the  part  of  the  mind. 
Habit  is  a  ruling  power  in  life,  and  sounds  or 
ideas  to  which  we  are  accustomed  rise  uncalled- 
for  to  the  intelligence  and  the  lips.  Every  one 
must  have  experienced  the  difficulty  of  pronouncing 
some  sound  in  a  foreign  language  to  which  there 
is  nothing  similar  in  his  own  ;  and  in  proportion 
to  the  strangeness  of  the  sound  will  he  the  vocal 
effort  to  produce  it.  The  more  regular  the  inflec- 
tional system  of  a  language,  the  more  readily  do 
we  learn  it ;  and  the  ease  with  which  a  knowledge 
of  Italian,  as  compared  with  German,  may  he 
acquired,  results  to  a  great  extent  from  the  supe- 
rior regularity  of  its  inflections.  The  tendency  of 
all  linguistic  progress  is  to  reduce  the  number  of 
anomalous  forms,  and  bring  them  all,  whatever  may 
have  been  their  origin,  under  one  and  the  same 
type.  Thus,  in  modern  Greek,  certain  declen- 
sions have  become  the  prevailing  models  in  accord- 
ance with  which  substantives  are  declined,  and 
words  like  cj)i>\a%  have  long  ago  become  fyvkcucos.1 
This  process  of  assimilation  of  sounds  and  gram- 

1  So  in  the  Ionic  of  Herodotus.  The  modern  Greek  declines 
innumerable  words  which  formerly  belonged  to  different  declen- 
sions after  the  type  of  ra/xias ;  as  fiaaikeas,  yepovras,  avdpas,  &c. 


350      THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE. 

raatical  terminations  is  accelerated  by  contact  with 
another  language.  Exceptions  and  irregularities, 
which  seem  quite  natural  to  a  native  habituated  to 
their  use,  are  always  hateful  to  the  foreigner,  inas- 
much as  they  require  a  greater  effort  of  memory 
and  attention.  To  say  nothing  of  the  general  loss 
of  inflections,  many  of  which  had  grown  otiose, 
the  preponderance  of  the  plural  in  -s  in  English  is 
due  to  the  Xorman  invasion,  as  well  as  the  soft- 
ening or  dropping  of  the  guttural  aspirate  in  words 
like  enough  and  though.1  Assimilation,  so  frequent 
a  cause  of  phonetic  change,  is  wholly  occasioned 
by  the  attempt  to  avoid  pronouncing  a  fresh  sound, 
and  by  allowing  analogy  to  operate  upon  an 
adjacent  letter ;  and  other  phonetic  changes  are 
extended  and  stereotyped  in  speech  by  means  of 
the  same  principle.  But  it  is  not  phonetic  change 
alone  that  is  influenced  in  this  way  by  the  wish  to 
save  trouble.  Nothing  is  harder  than  to  think  out 
a  new  thought  or  to  grasp  a  totally  new  idea ; 
hence  the  conceptions  applicable  to  one  set  of 
phenomena  are  transferred  to  an  entirely  differ- 
ent, and  perhaps  even  contradictory  set ;  and  simi- 

1  The  effects  of  the  movement;  set  on  foot  in  this  direction  by 
the  Norman  invasion  were  very  slow  in  being  brought  about.  It 
was  not  until  the  seventeenth  century  that  the  guttural  sound  had 
disappeared  uniformly  in  the  South  of  England,  and  it  still  flourishes 
in  the  North.  When  Butler  wrote  in  1633,  it  is  clear  that  it  had 
become  altogether  extinct  in  the  South.  See  A.  J.  Ellis,  "Early 
English  Pronunciation,"  vol.  i.  pp.  209-214. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE.       351 

larities  are  ingeniously  detected  between  the  most 
dissimilar  things.  It  was  long  before  the  several 
relations  of  space,  time,  and  manner  came  to  be 
distinguished  from  one  another,  and  we  may  even 
now  hear  expressions  used  of  time  which  can 
strictly  be  employed  of  space  alone.  So,  again, 
the  wealth  of  meanings  contained  in  our  dictionary 
is  the  result  of  the  endeavour  to  get  at  new  ideas 
without  having  to  take  the  trouble  of  inventing 
them.  The  words  post  and  arm  may  be  selected 
as  illustrations  of  the  roundabout  way  in  which  the 
human  mind  goes  to  work  to  increase  its  store  of 
conceptions.  From  the  simple  idea  of  a  thing 
placed  or  set  we  have  a  myriad  derivatives,  from 
the  stake  fixed  in  the  ground  to  the  medium  of 
modern  correspondence.  Similarly,  analogy  has 
extended  the  signification  of  arm  to  the  weapon  a 
man  carries,  a  channel  of  the  sea,  or  the  power  of 
law.  If  Curtius  is  right,  no  better  instance  can 
be  found  of  the  extraordinary  transformations  of 
meaning  undergone  by  words  than  the  Homeric 
adjective  (f>o£bs,  which,  derived  from  the  root  bhaj, 
u  to  bake,"  originally  signified  a  vessel  of  baked 
clay,  and  finally  came  to  be  applied  to  the  head  of 
Thersites,  the  peaked  shape  of  which  resembled  the 
household  amjjJwra  with  its  pointed  bottom  for 
sticking  in  the  ground.1     When  we  consider  the 

1  Curtius,  "  Grundzuge  der  Griech.  Etymologie,"  p.  172  (21  edit.) 


352      THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  LN  LANGUAGE. 

manner  in  which  the  lexicon  is  enlarged  and  altered 
by  the  action  of  analogy,  and  the  unlikely  cases  to 
which  we  find  it  applied,  we  may  well  be  cautious 
in  assuming  the  primitive  independence  of  two 
roots  which  agree  in  sound  but  differ  in  meaning.1 
It  is  not  more  difficult  to  understand  how  the 
name  of  the  guinea-pig  could  have  been  given,  and, 
what  is  more,  accepted,  among  people  acquainted 
with  the  swine,  than  to  comprehend  how  the  South 
Sea  Islander  could  call  the  dog  a  pig,  or  the 
Kuriaks  the  ox  "  the  Russian  elk  "  (Ruski  olehi)? 
TTe  have  now  to  examine  the  influence  of  ana- 
logy in  language  as  affecting  its  matter  and  its 
form.  And  first,  as  regards  its  matter.  Here  we 
find  it  bringing  about  changes  in  accent,  in  quan- 
tity, and  in  pronunciation  generally.  False  rather 
than  true  analogy  is  the  guiding  principle  ;  that 
is  to  say,  the  historical  reasons  for  a  certain  pro- 

1  Dormer  has  a  short  but  instructive  article  in  tlie  Zeltschrijt 
dcr  D.  M.  G.,  xxvii.  4  (1873),  on  root-formation  in  the  Finnic- 
Ugrian  languages,  in  which  he  points  out  that  the  great  trans- 
parency of  the  Ugrian  family  of  speech  allows  us  to  see  the  passage 
of  one  signification  in  a  root  into  another  of  a  wholly  different  kind, 
accompanied  by  a  modification  of  the  vowel.  Thus  kayan  is  "  to 
ring"  and  "to  lighten;"  kar-yun  and  kir-yun,  "to  cry,"  but 
kir-on,  "  to  cur.se ;"  kah-iscn,  kuh-iscn,  kuh-isen,  "  to  hit,"  "stamp  ;" 
kdh-iscn,  kuh-iscn,  "to  rear;"  keh-Uen,  kih-isen,  "to  boil."  The 
Turanian  idioms  conceal  their  radicals  so  slightly  that  this  develop- 
ment of  meaning  is  still  living  an(l  Btall  traceable  in  them. 

8  See  Pott,  "  Etymologische  ForBcnungen,''  II.  i.  pp.  125-139 
(second  edition).  "  The  New  Zealanders  are  stated  to  have  called 
"horses  large  dogs  "  (Farrar,  "  Origin  of  Language,"  p.  119). 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE.     353 

uunciation  are  forgotten,  and  a  word  is  made  to 
conform  to  what,  from  some  cause  or  other,  has 
become  the  favourite  and  most  common  type. 
Thus  the  general  tendency  of  our  own  language  is 
to  throw  hack  the  accent  as  far  as  possible  ;  and 
accordingly  words  like  balcony  and  illustrated, 
which  fifty  years  ago  were  pronounced  with  the 
accent  on  the  penultima,  are  now  usually  sounded 
balcony  and  illustrated.  Contemplate  and  blas- 
phemous, in  which  Tennyson  and  Milton  preserve 
the  penultimate  accent,  are  now  almost  always 
accented  on  the  first  syllable;1  and  revenue  has 
long  followed  their  example.  Sooner  or  later 
analogy  is  pretty  sure  to  force  all  exceptional 
cases  into  harmony  with  what  has  become  the 
prevailing  rule  of  pronunciation.2  In  no  other 
way,  again,  can  we  explain  how  it  is  that  whereas 

1  "When  I  contemplate  all  alone"  (Tennyson,  "  In  Memoriam," 
lxxxiii.  1).  "0  argument  blasphemous,  false,  and  proud!  "  (Mil- 
ton, "Paradise  Lost,"  book  v.)  The  change  that  has  taken  place 
in  the  pronunciation  of  tea  since  the  reign  of  Queen  Anne  is  of  a 
similar  nature.     Pope  has — 

"  Soft  yielding  minds  to  water  glide  away, 
And  sip,  with  nymphs,  their  elemental  tea." 

— "Rape  of  the  Lock,"  canto  i.  (so,  too,  canto  iii.) 

2  In  a  paper  read  before  the  Philological  Society  (March  1875), 
Mr  J.  Payne  pointed  out  that  many  words  in  the  Midland  dialect 
are  of  old  French  origin,  though  disguised  by  the  accent,  which  ha3 
been  transferred  from  the  final  to  the  first  or  second  syllable  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  English  rule  of  accentuation.  Thus  enchantoilr 
has  become  enchanter  ;  batdile,  battle;  labber  is  for  labour,  fuzzen  for 
foison,  Marry  for  Marie,  Vice  for  enticer,  &c. 

Z 


354     THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE. 

Irish  and  Bohemian  accent  all  their  words  on  the 
first  syllable,  Welsh  and  Polish  accent  all  theirs 
on  the  penulthna.1  "Welsh  and  Irish  on  the  one 
side,  Bohemian  and  Polish  on  the  other,  are  dia- 
lects too  closely  related  not  to  oblige  us  to  believe 
that  there  was  a  time  when  the  common  idiom 
out  of  which  they  have  severally  developed  was 
pronounced  in  the  same  way ;  but  circumstances 
caused  a  particular  mode  of  accentuation  to  be- 
come fashionable  in  each  of  the  separated  dialects, 
and  the  whole  stock  of  words  in  each  was  there- 
upon gradually  brought  under  the  dominant  type. 
It  must  have  been  much  the  same  with  Latin  and 
the  iEolic  dialect  in  Greece.  We  now  know  that 
the  regular  throwing  back  of  the  accent  as  far  as 
possible  was  the  late  product  of  the  action  of  ana- 
logy, and  not  the  survival  of  a  primitive  practice. 
The  normal  Greek  accentuation  agrees  with  that 
of  Vedaic  Sanskrit,  even  in  such  seemingly  arbi- 
trary cases  as  the  different  position  of  the  accent 
in  the  numerals  pdnchan,  7reVre,  and  sajjtchi,  eirrd ; 
and  Doric  Greek  has  more  truly  preserved  the 
paroxyton  of  the  third  person  plural  in  the  second 
aorist,  which  primarily  ended  with  a  long  syllable 

1  Whitney,  "  Language  and  the  Study  of  Language,"  p.  96. 
The  accent,  however,  is  not  all  over  Ireland  on  the  first  syllable. 
O'Donovan  states  that  the  poets  of  the  north  and  south  of  Ireland 
are  no  longer  in  metrical  harmony  with  one  another  because  they 
place  the  accent  so  differently. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE.     355 

(€tu7tovt),  than  has  the  classical  dialect,  where 
the  ancient  form  of  the  word  has  been  forgotten, 
and  the  tendency  that  became  a  dominant  law  in 
iEolic  and  Latin  has  been  followed.1  Intimately 
connected  with  accent  is  quantity;  and  in  this 
also  the  modifying  influence  of  analogy  has  been 
active.  A  good  example  is  afforded  by  the  Latin 
rule,  which  allows  a  vowel  before  a  mute  followed 
by  a  liquid  to  be  either  long  or  short.  Thus  we 
have  latebrce  or  latebrce  from  latere,  scatebra  or 
scatebra  from  scatere ;  and  Horace  addresses  the 
fountain  of  Bandusia  as  "  splendidior  vitro."  Now, 
by  all  the  laws  of  prosody,  the  first  syllable  of 
vitrum  ought  to  be  as  long  as  the  middle  syllable 
of  latebrce  and  scatebra,  since  the  word  stands  for 
vis-trum,  that  is,  xid-trum,  from  the  root  vid.  But 
in  numerous  instances  the  vowel  before  the  double 
consonant  was  short  by  nature,  and  since  this 
could  be  lengthened  when  necessary,  the  belief 
grew  up  that  any  vowel  before  a  mute  and  a  liquid 
might  be  either  long  or  short,  and  so  a  naturally 
long  vowel  came  to  be  used  as  a  short  one 
wherever  the  exigencies  of  the  metre  demanded  it. 
Much  the  same  has  happened  with  words  termi- 
nating in  d  or  t.  The  majority  of  vocables  which 
ended  in  a  dental  had  the  vowel  of  the  last  syllable 
properly  short ;   and  accordingly  all  such  syllables 

1  Ahrens,  "De  Dialect.  Doric,"  p.  28  sq. 


3oC     THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE. 

came  to  "be  regarded  as  short,  whatever  may  have 
been  the  original  length  of  the  vowel.  Hence  it 
is  that  we  find  words  like  sed,  the  old  ablative  of 
the  third  personal  pronoun,  or  sit,  the  contracted 
form  of  the  optative  siet  with  long  e,1  employed 
with  a  short  vowel.  So  again,  in  Greek,  Hartel 
has  shown  that  the  -i  of  the  dative  plural  and  the 
-a  of  plural  neuters  were  primitively  long — a  fact 
traces  of  which  may  still  be  observed  in  Homer.2 
The  short  final  syllable,  however,  of  the  third  per- 
son plural  of  the  verb  (Xeyovac,  for  \eyovrt),  and  the 
short  accusative  termination  of  nouns  of  the  third 
declension  (koBci,  for  7ro$a/j),  prepared  the  way  for 
shortening  every  terminal  -i  and  -a  ;  and  when  once 
the  ear  and  tongue  had  become  accustomed  to  the 
shortened  form  of  these  terminations,  every  fresh 
case  that  occurred  had  to  conform  to  the  general 
analogy. 

But  not  accent  and  quantity  only,  the  pronun- 
ciation of  syllables  and  letters  also  falls  under  the 
same  principle  of  change.  How  much,  indeed,  a 
change  in  the  latter  depends  upon  a  change  of 
accent  may  be  seen  from  the  so-called  guna,  in 
which  the  modification  of  the  vowel  is  entirely 
occasioned  by  the  stress  laid  upon  it.     But  what- 

1  Sict  answer  to  the  Sanskrit  optative  'syat,  tbe  Greek  drj  for 
ialrj  (=  iayvj). 

-  Hartel,  "  Homerische  Studien,"  1S73.  See  Curtius  in  "  Stu- 
dierj  zur  Griecb.  und  Lateiu.  Grammatik.,"  iv.  2,  p.  477. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE.     357 

ever  may  be  the  cause  of  change,  when  once  the 
new  pronunciation  has  taken  a  firm  hold  upon  the 
speech,  it  gradually  extends  itself  to  the  whole 
vocabulary,  so  that  it  may  happen  that  a  sound 
formerly  familiar  to  a  language  dies  out  so  utterly 
that  the  speakers  find  themselves  unable  to  pro- 
nounce it  when  met  with  in  another  dialect.  A 
striking  example  of  this  is  to  be  found  in  the 
history  of  the  guttural  aspirate  in  English.  .  A 
similar  occurrence  seems  to  have  taken  place  in 
Assyrian  in  the  case  of  the  letter  'ayin.  This  had 
been  thinned  into  a  modified  i  vowel,  so  that 
when  they  wanted  to  express  the  name  of  the  Pale- 
stinian city  Gaza  (nu?)>  they  could  find  no  better 
representative  of  the  old  guttural  sound  of  'ayin, 
as  preserved  in  Western  Semitic,  than  the  ordi- 
nary guttural  aspirate  k/ietk,  and  so  n*y  Cazza/i) 
was  written  khazitu}  The  action  of  analogy  upon 
pronunciation,  however,  is  nowhere  exemplified 
more  clearly  than  in  the  adoption  of  foreign  words. 
A  Frenchman  drops  the  final  consonants  of  the 
names  and  terms  which  he  borrows  or  uses,  and 
the  Englishman  speaks  of  Mar  sails  and  Paris,  of 
lieutenant  and  passport.  Indeed,  our  own  language 
is  a  most  interesting  monument  of  the  profound 
and  universal  change  in  pronunciation  that  may 

1  The  final  syllable  is  the  feminine  termination  in  -fl  (-t),  which 
has  become  -n  (-h)  in  Hebrew. 


358     THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE. 

be  brought  about  by  the  influence  of  analogy 
when  special  circumstances  give  a  particular  mode 
of  pronunciation  a  superiority  in  the  linguistic 
struggle  for  existence.  Our  vowels  are  no  longer 
what  they  were  three  centuries  ago.  The  a  and 
the  i  have  become  diphthongs,  and  the  e  has  taken 
the  place  of  the  i.  Sir  Christopher  Wren's  cathe- 
dral is  St  Paul's,  not  St  Powl's,  and  the  final  e 
has  long  ceased  to  be  sounded.  But  a  change  is 
still  going  on.  Just  as  it  has  been  remarked 
that  French  is  becoming  more  and  more  nasalised, 
so  also  has  it  been  noted  that  the  vowels  in  Eng- 
lish are  continually  growing  more  and  more 
thinned.  The  broad  a  in  words  like  mast  or  bad 
is  a  mark  of  Cockneyism,  and  the  diphthongal 
sound  of  u  is  extending  itself  on  all  sides.  The 
same  preference  for  diphthongal  sounds  is  making 
itself  apparent  in  words  like  either  and  neither, 
the  first  syllable  of  which  is  beginning  to  be 
pronounced  as  though  it  were  German,  although 
the  only  other  word  in  English  by  which  such  a 
pronunciation  could  be  supported  is  the  misspelt 
height  from  high.  It  has  been  pointed  out1  that 
the  reason  why  we  pronounce  the  three  first  vowels 
of  the  alphabet  in  a  way  essentially  different  from 
that  in  which  they  are  sounded  in  the  majority  of 
our  words  is  because  they  are   so   pronounced  in 

1  Earle,  "Philology  of  the  English  Tongue,"  pp.  111-114   (2d 
edit.) 


.      THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE.     359 

the  three  vocables  in  most  common  use,  a,  me 
and  I ;  and  it  is  a  cnrious  instance  of  the  power 
of  analogy  that,  although  the  numerical  majority 
of  words  is  against  it,  yet  the  frequency  with  which 
this  peculiar  pronunciation  is  heard  in  the  three 
words  just  mentioned,  aided  by  the  values  assigned 
to  the  three  vowels  as  letters  of  the  alphabet, 
induces  us  to  give  this  pronunciation  to  them 
wherever  they  occur  in  foreign  terms  with  the  true 
pronunciation  of  which  we  are  unacquainted.1  But 
the  influence  of  analogy  will,  of  course,  be  pro- 
portionally greater  where  we  have  to  do,  not  with 
the  spelling,  but  with  sound  exclusively;  and  the 
power  exerted  by  the  principle  over  written  words 
will  enable  us  to  understand  how  largely  it  will 
affect  spoken  words,  more  especially  in  an  illite- 
rate society.  This,  I  think,  will  afford  an  explana- 
tion of  the  phenomena  of  Grimm's  law.  Accident, 
so  to  speak,  may  have  made  a  particular  pronun- 
ciation of  some  letter  predominant  in  one  of  the 
branches  of  the  Aryan  family ;  but  when  this  pro- 
nunciation had  once  fixed  itself  in  the  most  com- 

1  Mr  J.  Rhys  says  of  the  peculiar  Welsh  sound  represented  by 
U,  that  it  was  produced  by  "the  coming  together  of  the  two  Z's, 
which  were  undoubtedly  so  pronounced  up  to  a  date  which  has  not 
as  yet  been  exactly  fixed.  Eventually  this  sound  has  much  ex- 
tended its  domain  in  the  language  "  ('*  The  Early  Inscribed  Stones 
of  Wales,"  reprinted  from  the  Carnarvon  and  Denbigh  Herald, 
1873,  p.  11).  It  may  be  noted  that  the  same  sound  is  to  be  found 
among  the  Cherokees  of  North  America.  (Prof.  Haldeman,  Proc. 
of  Araer.  Orient.  Soc.,  1874,  p.  xlr.) 


800     THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE.       • 

monly  used  words,  or  in  the  majority  of  them,  or  had 
approved  itself  to  the  popular  taste  by  its  greater 
easiness  of  utterance,  or  by  some  other  reason,  it 
was  extended  to  every  case  found  in  the  vocabu- 
lary. We  may  thus  account  for  the  remarkable 
uniformity  and  regularity  in  the  shifting  of  sounds 
which  is  observed  in  the  several  members  of  the 
Indo  -  European  group.  In  this  instance  the 
action  of  analogy  would  have  been  natural ;  but 
it  may  also  be  produced  artificially.  A  good 
illustration  of  this  is  to  be  found  in  the  Homeric 
dialect.  The  Iliad,  and,  to  a  far  less  extent,  the 
Odyssey,1  are  the  growth  of  generations,  old  epic 

1  The  critical  labours  of  Kirchhoff  ("Die  Composition  der 
Odyssee,"  1869,  and  "Die  Homerische  Odyssee  und  ihre  Ent- 
stehung,"  1S59  ;  see  also  Heimreich  in  the  Progr.  des  Gym.  zu 
Flcnsburg,  1871)  have  made  it  pretty  clear  that  the  Odyssey  is  the 
amalgamation  of  two  artificial  poems,  each  of  which  was  based  upon 
ancient  popular  lays.  The  redactor  would  have  flourished  in  the 
seventh  century  B.C.,  since  not  only  is;  an  acquaintance  with  the 
Argonautika  displayed,  but  also  with  countries  in  the  West,  whither 
the  Greek  colonists  transferred  the  myths  originally  localised  in  the 
Black  Sea,  while  the  Kimmerians  (Od.  xi.  14-19),  who  were  driven 
out  of  Tartary  by  the  Skyths,  in  the  time  of  Gyges,  and  a  little 
before  the  siege  of  Nineveh  by  Kyaxares  (B.C.  660),  are  mentioned 
by  name.  So,  too,  the  fountain  of  Artakie  (Od.  x.  108)  was  an 
historical  locality  near  Kyzikus,  the  birthplace  of  Aristeas,  whose 
poem,  the  Aritnaapea,  first  informed  the  Greeks  about  Kimmerians 
and  Skyths  ;  and  as  Kyzikus  was  founded  between  the  7th  and  24th 
Olympiads,  and  a  certain  lapse  of  time  must  be  allowed  for  the 
attachment  of  a  myth  to  the  place,  the  story  of  the  Liestrygouians 
could  hardly  have  been  introduced  into  the  Odyssey  before  660  B.C. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE.     361 

formulae  and  verses  being  handed  down  tradition- 
ally from  rhapsode  to  rhapsode,  and  imitated  and 
incorporated  in  a  slowly  increasing  body  of  poetry. 
But  the  imitations  very  frequently  were  based 
upon  a  false  analogy.  The  old  pronunciation  had 
been  lost ;  and  what  had  really  a  sound  philo- 
logical origin  was  supposed  to  be  due  to  metric 
license,  and  so  came  to  be  applied  to  totally 
different  cases.  Thus,  as  Mangold  has  pointed 
out,  the  analogy  of  the  diektasis  or  so-called 
resolution  of  the  vowels  in  verbs  in  -aa>,  where  it 
had  a  philological  reason,  led  to  a  similar  resolu- 
tion of  the  syllable  in  verbs  in  -ow,  in  the  con- 
junctives of  verbs  in  -/u,  and  elsewhere,  where  it 
was  wholly  unjustifiable.1 

Before  leaving  this  part  of  the  subject,  I  must 

It  may  be  true  that  ill  the  Iliad,  as  well  as  in  the  Odyssey,  the 
armour,  the  chariots,  and  the  dress,  both  of  men  and  women,  is  the 
same  as  upon  vases  and  sculptures  of  the  fifth  century  B.C.,  but 
however  hard  it  may  be  to  explain  how  this  could  be  the  case  in 
an  age  of  rapid  change  and  revolution,  it  is  certain  that  the  sub- 
jects of  the  vase  paintings  and  the  Lykian  sculptures,  which  are 
older  than  the  sixth  century,  are  taken  from  the  Iliad  alone,  while  it 
is  only  in  the  Odyssey  that  a  reference  is  made  to  the  nine  muses 
(Od.  xxiv.  60),  and  therefore  to  a  knowledge  of  tragedy,  comedy, 
prose  writing,  and  astronomy,  and  that  the  Attic  (and  pust-Solonian) 
division  of  the  month  into  decades  (Od.  xiv.  161-164),  and  the  day 
into  hours  (Od.  iii.  334),  is  alluded  to. 

i  Mangold,  "De  Diectasi  Hornerica,"  in  Curtius'  Studien,  vi.  1. 
See  also  Hartel,  "  Homerische  Studien  ;  "  Curtius  in  the  Studien,  iv 
2  ;  and  Paley  "  On  the  Odyssey  "  in  the  British  Quarterly,  Oct.  1873. 


3G2    THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IX  LANGUAGE. 

not  forget  to  notice  how,  even  in  the  material  of 
language,  analogy  shows  itself  as  a  creative  and 
reconstructing  principle.  English  has  somewhat 
doubtfully  enriched  itself  with  several  anomalous 
plurals  by  means  of  it.  The  distinction  of  vowel 
between  man  and  men,  foot  midfeet,  was,  in  Anglo- 
Saxon,  purely  euphonic.  The  dative  singular  was 
men,  just  as  much  as  the  genitive  and  dative 
plural  were  manna  and  mannum.  But  the  thinner 
form  with  e  occurred  more  frequently  in  the  plural 
than  in  the  singular,  and  so,  when  the  cases  of 
the  old  language  disappeared,  the  unmeaning 
difference  became  significant.  A  absorbed  the 
singular  and  e  the  plural,  instead  of  being  merely 
predominant.  The  distinction  between  the  present 
and  perfect  of  verbs  like  lead,  led,  is  of  the  same 
nature.  The  Anglo-Saxon  imperfect  was  marked, 
not  by  the  change  of  vowel,  but  by  the  flection  ; 
when  this  was  dropped,  however,  the  greater  fre- 
quency of  the  obscure  vowel  in  the  past  tense, 
owing  to  the  inflection  (ledde),  caused  it  to  be 
assigned  to  all  the  persons,  and  to  become  a  char- 
acteristic of  the  tense.  So  in  Greek,  the  distinction 
between  verbs  in  -dco,  -eco,  and  -doa  was  at  first 
purely  phonetic,  each  of  the  vowels  being  only  a 
modification  of  the  same  original  termination 
which  we  have  in  Sanskrit ;  but  in  course  of 
time,  in  consequence  of  the  accidental  fact  that  a 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE.     363 

considerable  number  of  verbs  in  -oco  were  active, 
and  of  verbs  in  -eco  neuter,  the  form  in  -oco  came 
to  be  more  and  more  set  apart  to  denote  a  transi- 
tive, and  that  in  -eco  an  intransitive  notion,  while 
the  form  in  -aco  floated  between  the  two  senses. 
It  is  true  that  the  distinction  in  meaning  was 
never  exhaustively  carried  out,  but  we  can  hardly 
doubt  that  it  would  have  been  had  Greek  lasted 
long  enough  and  never  become  a  literary  language. 
It  is  highly  probable  that  the  significant  vowel  of 
Arabic  verbs  has  the  same  history.  In  Arabic,  u 
(and  2,  for  the  most  part)  marks  a  passive  sense, 
a  generally  an  active  one.  Now  traces  of  this 
distinction  are  to  be  found  in  Hebrew  and  Aramaic, 
as  well  as  in  Assyrian  ;  but  what  has  become  the 
rule  in  Arabic  is  at  most  nothing  more  than  a 
tendency  in  the  other  Semitic  idioms.1 

The  change  of  the  euphonic  into  the  significant 
vowel  would  be  much  easier  in  a  Semitic  than  in 
an  Aryan  tongue,  since  analogy  would  be  all  in 
its  favour — Semitic  grammar  preferring  to  effect 

1  Wright,  "Arabic  Gram.,"  pp.  28,  29;  Gesenius,  "Hebrew 
Gram.,"  §  43  ;  Cowper,  "  Syriac  Gram.,"  §  78  ;  Dillmann,  "  Gram- 
matik  der  athiopischen  Sprache,"  p.  116  ;  and  my  "Assyrian 
Gram.,"  p.  72. 

According  to  Bleek  ("  Comp.  Gramm.  of  South  African  Lan- 
guages," ii.  p.  138),  the  vowel  which  terminates  nouns  in  Ba-ntu,  and 
has  nothing  to  do  with  the  derivative  prefixes,  may  be  either  a  (or 
e)  or  o.  The  latter  has  "  a  passive  meaning,  i  an  active  or  causative, 
a  a  neutral  force." 


364     THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE. 

by  internal  vowel-change  what  is  left  to  external 
flection  in  the  Indo-European  group  ;  but  the  in- 
stances given  above  show  that  the  process  is  not 
unknown  to  our  own  family  of  languages  wherever 
association  of  ideas  and  sounds  may  favour  it.  In 
contrasting  Aryan  vocalism  with  Semitic  consonan- 
talism,  it  is  impossible  to  draw  any  sharply-defined 
lines  of  distinction.  Here,  as  everywhere  else,  how- 
ever true  our  classification  may  be,  yet  the  several 
classes  pass  insensibly  one  into  the  other,  and  we 
cannot  precisely  determine  their  boundaries.  It 
is  to  this  fact  that  the  idolum  of  the  three  stages 
in  the  growth  of  a  language  mainly  owes  its  origin. 
We  must  next  consider  the  manner  in  which 
analogy  has  acted  npon  the  form  and  content  of 
speech.  This  is  the  side  upon  which  it  has  been 
most  influential,  and  where  its  consequences  have 
been  most  important.  Some  form  suddenly  gets 
into  vogue  and  replaces  older  ones,  or  leaves  but  a 
few  of  them,  which  henceforth  are  regarded  as 
abnormal  exceptions  ;  or,  again,  a  new  grammatical 
relation  is  elaborated  in  some  particular  case,  and 
then  extended  to  others  more  or  less  similar. 
Thus  the  English  perfect  in  -ed  has  become  pre- 
dominant in  the  language.  Originally  dide,  the 
reduplicated  past  tense  of  do,  it  was  affixed  to 
verb  after  verb,  until  only  a  few  were  left  which 
still  follow  the  primitive  method  of  conjugation, 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE.     365 

and  every  new  verb  taken  into  nse  has  to  form  its 
perfect  by  means  of  it.1  The  Latin  perfect  in  -vi 
or  ui}  and  future  in  -bo,  grew  up  in  the  same  way, 
by  postfixing  fuo,  Jtci,  in  a  few  instances,  which 
continually  tended  to  become  more  and  more 
numerous.  In  French,  every  fresh  verb  has  to 
belong  to  the  first  conjugation.  There  is  no  reason 
in  the  nature  of  things  why  the  language  should 
not  employ  words  like  electrisoir,  2y^°9raP^r '? 
but  the  mysterious  influence  of  analogy  has  ruled 
that  only  electrifier,  2^l0^09raP^ert  should  be  ad- 
mitted into  the  domain  of  speech.2  This  is  the 
form  which,  in  the  struggle  for  existence,  has 
established  itself  to  the  exclusion  of  every  other. 
Ear    and    mind  had    grown    accustomed    to    the 

1  The  reduplicated  perfect  itself,  the  oldest  contrivance  of 
speech  for  marking  past  and  extended  time  in  contradistinction  to 
aoristic  indefiniteness,  may  be  regarded  as  an  instance  of  analogy. 
Here  the  repetition  of  the  same  sound  finally  came  to  be  used  to 
express  important  grammatical  relations.  For  the  widespread 
results  of  reduplication,  see  Pott,  "  Doppelung  als  eines  der  wich- 
tigsten  Bildungs-Mittel  der  Sprache."  Cf.  also  Lubbock  "  On  the 
Origin  of  Civilisation,"  pp.403— 10 5,  who  makes  a  curious  calculation 
of  the  proportion  of  reduplicated  words  found  in  English,  French, 
German,  and  Greek  on  the  one  side,  and  some  of  the  jargons  of 
Africa,  America,  and  the  Pacific  on  the  other,  the  result  being,  that 
whereas  "in  the  four  European  languages  we  get  about  two  redu- 
plications in  1000  words,  in  the  savage  ones  the  number  varies 
from  38  to  170,  being  from  twenty  to  eighty  times  as  many  in 
proportion." 

2  Ancessi,  "  L'S  Causatif  et  le  Theme  N  dans  les  Langues  de 
Sem  et  de  Cham,"  p.  72. 


3G6     THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE. 

association  of  a  special  sound  with  a  special  sense, 
and  could  allow  of  no  other.  One  of  the  most 
striking  examples  of  the  way  in  which  this  sometimes 
results  in  the  creation  of  wholly  new  flections  is  the 
distinction  of  gender  in  the  nominative  singular 
of  Latin  comparatives.  This  arose  in  the  historic 
period,  and  we  can  accordingly  trace  its  genesis. 
The  termination  of  the  nominative  was  indifferently 
-ior  or  -ios  (-ins),  like  the  Greek  -Iwv  and  Sanskrit 
-yan,  from  an  original  -yans,  r  in  Latin  commonly 
standing  for  s, — e.g.,  in  arbos  and  arbor,  generis 
(which  would  represent  a  Sansk.  janasyas),  from 
genus,  &c.  In  Valerius  Antias  (apud  Priscian.,  vii. 
345),  we  still  find  prior  used  for  the  neuter  ("senatus 
consul  turn  prior  "),  and  the  title  of  the  Fourth 
Annal  of  Cassius  Hemina  was  "  Bellum  Punicum 
posterior  ;  "  hut  the  connection  of  the  idea  of  the 
neuter  with  the  ending  -us  in  such  words  as  opus, 
genus,  and  the  like,  and  of  the  masculine  with  the 
ending  -or  in  such  words  as  honor  or  arbor,  brought 
about  the  specialisation  of  form  which  we  meet 
with  in  the  classical  age.1  The  remarkable  regu- 
larity which  we  find  in  the  Assyrian  conjuga- 
tions has  been  produced  in  much  the  same  way. 
Its  artificiality  is  shown  by  a  comparison  of  the 
other  Semitic  idioms.     Kal,  niphal,  and  shaphel, 

1  Curtius,  "  Studien  zur  Griecli.  u.  Lateiu  Gramuiatik,"  vi.  1,  p. 
262. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE.      367 

the  active,  passive,  and  causative,  were  taken  as 
the  three  primary  voices  ;  and  not  only  was  kal 
provided  with  the  intensive  pael,  but  a  nipliael 
and  shcqihael  were  formed  as  well ;  while  the 
secondary  conjugations  in  t  and  tan  were  attached 
to  each  of  the  principal  voices,  including  pad.1 

1  Curtius  draws  attention  to  a  similar  instance  of  abnormal 
regularity  in  the  Latin  conjugation  ("  Studien  zur  Griech.  u.  Lat. 
Grammatik,"  v.  1).  After  the  model  of  vehimini,  the  plural  of  the 
middle  participle  used  for  the  second  person  plural  of  the  present, 
have  been  formed  vehamini  and  vehemini,  which  would  answer  to 
ixw/ucvoc  and  exoLfievoi  in  Greek,  and  even  vehebamini,  veheremini  ! 
Greek  analogues  to  the  latter  would  be  fj.ax€(roi/j.evoi  and  fxaxe^ai- 
fievoi.  The  remarks  of  the  eminent  German  philologist  deserve 
being  quoted: — "Analogie  setzt  iiberall  im  Gegensatz  zu  den 
normalen  Lautverhaltnissen  und  urspriinglichen  Form  en  eine  Art 
von  Verirrung  der  Sprachgefiihle  durch  ein  dem  redenden  Dunkel 
vorschwebendes  Vorbild  voraus,  dem  die  Neubildung  nur  aus- 
serlich  und  obne  Kucksicht  auf  die  Entstehung  der  Vorbilder 
folgt.  Unstreitig  ist  Analogie  in  diesem  Sinne  nicht  unahnlich 
jener  Anomalie,  welche  die  alten  Grammatiker  mit  uvveK^po^i-q 
bezeichneten,  namenlich  in  verhiiltnissmassig  jiingeren  Perioden 
der  Sprachgescbichte  vielfach  eingetreten.  Wenn  wir  z.  B.  bei 
Apollonius  Ehodius,  i.  45,  die  Form  fkenrro,  bei  Nonnus  Dion, 
xxiv.  241,  a[xeiTTo  lesen,  so  sind  solche  Gebilde  sicherlich  nur 
nach  der  Analogie  homerischer  wie  XeKro,  deKro,  /uukto,  KaTdirrjKTO 
entstanden  und  jeder  Versucb,  sie  in  das  naturliche  System  des 
Griechischen  Verbums  einzuordnen,  ware  verfehlt."  Elsewhere, 
again  ("Zur  Chronologie  der  indogermanischen  Sprachforschung," 
p.  6),  he  writes  as  follows  :— "  In  no  discussion  upon  language,  not 
even  in  the  analysis  of  forms,  much  less  in  the  settlement  of  pho- 
netic laws,  can  we  dispense  with  the  conception  of  analogy,  which 
is  something  purely  spiritual,  and,  as  far  as  I  can  see,  foreign  to 
mere  natural  development.  The  accusative  plural  iroXets  can 
hardly  be  explained  from  the  original  forms  toXi-vs  or  7roAt-as 
except  by  the  lazy  habit  of  making  the  accusative  plural  like  the 


3GS      THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE. 

Analogy,  however,  will  sometimes  bring  about 
far  more  wide-reaching  effects  than  the  altera- 
tion or  production  of  certain  grammatical  forms 
and  relations.  It  may  change  the  whole  character 
of  a  grammar,  the  whole  structure  of  a  language  ; 
provided,  that  is,  that  the  fundamental  principles 
upon  which  it  is  based,  the  mental  view  of  the 
people  to  which  it  belongs,  be  not  violated. 
Thus  Coptic,  which  was  formerly  an  affix-langu- 
age like  old  Egyptian  and  the  Semitic  tongues, 
has  become  a  prefix-language,  resembling  in  this 
respect  the  Berber,  the  Haussa,  and  other  sub- 
Semitic  dialects  of  North  Africa.  When  we 
remember  the  formal  relationship  between  these 
and  the  Semitic  idioms,  the  conclusion  seems 
forced  upon  us  that  they  also  have  undergone 
the  same  change  as  Coptic,  and  assumed  their 
present  appearance  within  a  comparatively  recent 
epoch. 

Analogy  is  equally  active  in  the  province  of 
syntax.  The  analytical  character  of  the  modern 
European  languages,  of  which  English  is  the  most 
extreme  example,  is  largely  due  to  its  influence. 
The  substitution  of  prepositions  and  syntactical 
contrivances    for  inflection  has   gradually  become 

nomiuative  plural.  Equally  spiritual  is  the  tendency  to  differen- 
tiate, which  can  be  as  plainly  pointed  out  as  the  other.  To  it  xre 
owe  the  fact  that  three  roots,  dp,  ip,  and  dp,  have  arisen  in  Greek, 
different  in  sound  and  meaning,  out  of  the  common  radical  ar." 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE.      369 

the  rule  instead  of  the  exception.  The  contact  of 
the  Teutonic  and  Romanic  nations  brought  about 
the  consciousness  and  analysis  of  the  relations  of 
grammar,  which  is  out  of  the  question  so  long  as 
the  native  dialect  alone  is  known ;  and  the  ten- 
dency to  replace  flection  by  analysis  and  accidence 
by  syntax  extended  itself  with  an  ever-increasing 
rapidity.  The  few  remains  of  flection,  the  last 
relics  of  an  uncultured  age,  which  still  exist  in 
English,  may  be  expected  to  disappear  in  time, 
even  supposing  that  pigeon-English  does  not  be- 
come the  universal  language,  as  a  recent  writer 
prophesies.1  Already  the  inflected  genitive  in  -s  is 
more  and  more  disused,  and  confined  to  poetry  or 
a  highflown  style,  the  general  receptacle  of  anti- 
quated forms ;  and  it  may  not  be  long  before  this 
fossil-like  survivor  of  nominal  inflection  becomes 
as  totally  extinct  as  it  is  in  modern  Persian,  where 
the  genitive  is  denoted  by  the  short  vowel  placed 
between  it  and  the  preceding  nominative.  The 
manner  in  which  we  express  the  relation  of  the 
genitive  must  follow  the  common  analogy,  and 
be  no  exception  to  the  analytic  character  of  our 
speech.  Another  example  of  the  effect  of  analogy 
upon  syntax  may  be  found  in  the  history  of  the 
relative  sentence,  which  has  been  so  ably  investi- 

1  See  W.  Simpson  on  "  China's  Future  Place  in  Philology,"  in 
Macmillan's  Magazine,  November  1873. 

2  A 


370     THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE. 

gatedby  Jolly  and  TVindisch.1  Comparative  syntax 
teaches  us  that  the  relative  sentence  was  primarily 
expressed  by  being  immediately  subordinated  to 
the  principal  clause  without  the  addition  of  any 
explanatory  word,  just  as  it  may  be  in  Hebrew  or 
Assyrian  poetry,  and  in  such  English  phrases  as 
a  This  is  the  man  I  saw."  For  the  sake  of  clear- 
ness and  emphasis,  however,  the  object  of  the 
antecedent  clause  was  repeated  in  the  consequent 
by  some  demonstrative  term  signifying  locality, 
and  the  attention  was  thus  drawn  to  the  idea 
intended  to  be  signalised.  Thus  in  Chinese,  the 
relative  so  properly  means  "  place  ;  "  2  and  Philippi 
has  shown  that  the  relative  pronoun  in  Semitic 
was  originally  a  demonstrative.3  So  it  was  also 
in  our  Aryan  family.  But  after  a  time,  this  pro- 
noun, this  representative  of  the  object  denoted, 
came  to  be  used  in  all  cases,  and  not  merely  where 
peculiar  stress  was  wished  to  be  laid  upon  it ;  and 
when  analogy  had  thus  uniformly  extended  this 
particular  employment  of  the  word,  it  ceased  to 
convey  any  longer  a  purely  demonstrative  sense, 
and  assumed   a  relative   signification,  which  was 


1  Jolly,  "  Ueber  die  einfachste  Form  dor  ITvpotaxis  im  Indoger- 
manischen  ;  "  and  Windisoh,  "  Untersuchungen  iiber  den  Ursprung 
des  Relativpronomens,"  in  Curtius'  Studien,  vi.  1,  and  ii.  2. 

2  Schott,  "  Chines.  Sprachlehre,"  p.  S8. 

3  Philippi,  "Wesen  und  Ursprung  des  Status  Constructus  im 
Uebni.bcb.en,''  p.  71  sq. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE.     371 

then  applied  by  the  further  operation  of  analogy  to 
instances  in  which  the  demonstrative  could  hardly 
have  been  employed. 

The  last  illustration  that  need  be  taken  is  the 
position  of  the  verb  and  objective  noun  in  the 
sentence.  It  is  remarkable  that  whereas  the  nor- 
mal place  of  the  verb  in  Latin  is  at  the  end  of 
the  clause,  while  the  same  rule  may  be  said  to 
hold  good  in  German  and  Dutch,  the  Romance 
languages,  which  have  grown  up  through  the 
contact  of  Teutonic  and  Latin  populations,  place 
the  verb  before  the  objective  case.  English  fol- 
lows the  same  order,  although  poetry  or  a  poetical 
style  are  still  allowed  to  adopt  a  contrary  arrange- 
ment without  fear  of  unintelligibility.  Now  it 
would  seem  to  us,  who  are  accustomed  to  such  an 
usage,  that  the  verbal  action  ought  naturally  to 
come  between  its  subject  and  the  object  upon 
which  it  is  directed ;  and  the  fact  that  this  is  the 
order  of  ideas  observed  in  those  dialects  which 
have  arisen  through  the  attempt  of  two  races  to 
render  themselves  mutually  intelligible,  would 
appear  to  support  this  view.  On  the  other  hand, 
this  order  is  found  only  in  the  analytic  stage  of 
Aryan  speech,  that  is,  in  its  latest  and  most 
modern  form,  while  the  arrangement  which  sets 
the  verb  at  the  end  becomes  more  and  more  uni- 
versal the  older  the  language  with  which  we  are 


372     THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE. 

dealing.     "Which   arrangement,  then,  is  the  most 
natural  ?    Not  the  most  simjile,  for  the  two  terms 
are  by  no  means    synonymous ;  and  philology  is 
continually  reminding   us   that  what   is  logically 
prior  is  seldom  historically  so,  but  that  simplicity 
and   clearness    are   only  reached  by  a  slow  and 
laborious    process.      The    answer  to    our  present 
question  is  furnished  by   observation  of  the  deaf 
and   dumb.     Deaf  mutes  enable  us  to  a  certain 
extent    to   make    the    experiment    which    Psam- 
mitikhus    is  said  to   have   attempted,  and  to   see 
what  kind  of  language  the  uneducated  mind  would 
form  for  itself  when   deprived  of   the   power  of 
learning  one  of  those  spoken  idioms  which  have 
been  elaborated  by  preceding  generations.     Now 
it  is  found  that  the  deaf  mute  invariably  places 
the  verb  at  the  end  of  the  sentence,  the  subject 
and  object,  to  which  his  thought  is  chiefly  directed, 
being  the  first  to  occur  to  his  mind.1     The  altera- 
tion, therefore,  which  has  been  brought  about  in 
English  and  the  Neo-Latin  dialects  in  this  natural 
order  of  ideas  must  be  due  to  the  action  of  some 
influential  principle  like  analogy.     A  speaker  who 
is   imperfectly  acquainted   with   the   language  of 
another  has  to  ransack  his  memory  for  the  names 
of  objects  and  conceptions  in  the  foreign  tongue ; 

1  Tylor,  "Researches  into  the  Early  History  of  Mankind,"  pp. 
92,  £3. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE.     373 

in  order  to  gain  time  for  this,  he  defers  mention- 
ing the  object  of  action  as  long  as  possible,  and 
interpolates  any  other  words  he  can  between  the 
subject  and  the  objective  noun,  the  verb  being,  of 
course,  one  of  the  first.  So  convenient  an  arrange- 
ment of  the  sentence  would  be  more  and  more  ex- 
tended by  means  of  analogy,  until  it  finally  became 
the  characteristic  of  the  language. 

If  analogy,  however,  has  done  so  much  for  the 
accidence  and  syntax  of  a  grammar,  it  has  done 
everything  for  the  meaning  of  words.  Professor 
Whitney  reduces  the  changes  of  signification  which 
are  perpetually  going  on  in  the  lexicon  to  two 
processes — one  the  specialisation  of  the  general, 
the  other  the  generalisation  of  the  special.1  But 
the  agent  of  change  is  analogy.  A  general  term 
is  applied  to  some  particular  object,  or  a  special 
term  to  a  less  special  instance  through  some 
likeness  supposed  to  exist  between  them  ;  new 
likenesses  are  then  detected ;  the  terms  are  used 
of  fresh  cases ;  and  so  the  process  of  the  ana- 
logical expansion  or  contraction  of  signification 
goes  on  indefinitely.  To  make  our  meaning  plain 
to  another,  it  is  necessary  that  we  should  emplo}r 
words  which  he  understands,  and  we  can  only 
convey  a  new  idea  to  him  by  comparing  and 
likening   it    to    one    with   which    he    is    already 

1  "  Language  and  the  Study  of  Language,"  p.  106. 


374     THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE. 

familiar.  Indeed,  it  is  not  only  in  the  instruc- 
tion of  others,  but  just  as  much  in  the  develop- 
ment of  our  own  knowledge,  that  the  same  con- 
trivance is  required.  One  idea  is  best  remembered 
by  being  connected  with  another  idea,  no  matter 
how  fanciful  the  connection  may  be ;  and  it  would 
be  quite  impossible  to  recollect  a  large  mass  of 
isolated  ideas.  Knowledge  is  one  vast  chain  of 
associations,  and  analogy  is  the  principal  forger 
of  its  several  links.  A  new  fact  falls  within  our 
experience,  a  new  object  is  discovered,  or  a  new 
notion  is  struck  out,  and  we  at  once  seek  to  bring 
it  within  the  circle  of  our  previous  knowledge,  and 
to  connect  it  with  something  with  which  we  are 
previously  acquainted.  The  name  assigned  to  it 
accordingly  expresses  the  resemblance  believed  to 
exist  between  the  new  subject  of  thought  and  the 
existing  furniture  of  the  mind.  It  has  long  been 
recognised  that  all  the  terms  which  denote  the 
spiritual  and  abstract  are  derived  from  the  phy- 
sical and  concrete.  Spirit  is  primarily  "  the 
breath,"  soul,  "  the  heaving  sea,"  Deits,  "  the 
bright  heaven."  Language  is  the  treasure-house 
of  worn-out  metaphors.  As  Carlyle  has  said, 
lt  They  are  its  muscles,  and  tissues,  and  living  in- 
teguments." l 

But   the  metaphors  belong  to  thought,  not  to 

1  "Sartor  Resartus,"  X. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE.     375 

the  mere  outward  form.  Language  is  the  expres- 
sion of  thought,  and  consequently,  though  thought 
and  its  expression  can  scarcely  be  separated  in  prac- 
tice, yet,  like  the  seal  and  its  impression,  they  are 
really  distinct,  or  rather,  while  thought  can  exist 
without  expression,  expression  cannot  exist  without 
thought.  The  outward  presupposes  the  inward,  the 
impression  presupposes  the  seal.  The  influence  of 
analogy,  therefore,  under  which  words  change  their 
significations,  is  exerted  upon  the  ideas  they 
denote  ;  the  mind  first  discovers  similarities  be- 
tween its  conceptions,  and  these  are  then  reflected 
in  speech.  The  dried  grape  is  called  a  plum  when 
put  into  a  cake  or  pudding,  because  it  looks  like 
the  fruit  of  that  name,  and  not  for  any  linguistic 
reason.  But  although  it  is  the  content  that  pro- 
perly modifies  the  form,  the  form  may  react  upon 
the  content.  In  this  case,  analogy  becomes  a 
truly  creative  philological  principle.  The  simple 
sound  of  the  word  itself,  its  mere  outer  husk,  as  it 
were,  calls  up  associations  which  create  new  sounds, 
new  ideas,  and  therefore  new  words.  There  arises 
an  imaginary  world,  answering  to  nothing  real  and 
substantial,  which  stands  solely  upon  the  basis  of 
uttered  speech.  It  is  the  creation  of  the  external 
side  of  language,  and  the  demiurge  is  analogy. 
There  will  be  an  unreal  world  either  of  content  or 
of  form.     In  the  first  instance,  the  mind  will  be 


376     THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE. 

deluded  by  those  false  notions,  those  Baconian 
idola,  which  have  done  so  much  to  impede  progress, 
and  which  are  called  popular  etymologies.  In  the 
second  instance,  it  is  only  the  expression  of 
thought  that  is  made  unreal,  only  the  outward 
form  of  language  that  is  forced  and  artificial, 
and  we  term  it  poetry.  The  two  creations  spring 
from  one  and  the  same  source,  but  they  represent 
two  different  stages  in  the  growth  of  the  mind. 
The  mythopceic  age  is  the  period  of  primitive  un- 
conscious childhood  and  barbarism,  and  wherever 
it  still  exists  it  bears  witness  to  a  naive  unthink- 
ing attitude  of  mind.  Poetry,  on  the  other  hand,  is 
the  cultured  and  conscious  expression  of  thought ; 
its  artificiality  is  recognised,  and  it  can  accordingly 
affect  only  the  outward  form.  It  is  the  spiritual- 
ising of  the  material,  which  it  therefore  moulds 
according  to  its  will;  while  the  etymological 
myth  is  the  materialising  of  the  spiritual,  which 
thus  becomes  distorted  and  untrue.  I  am  not  now 
going  to  discuss  the  origin  of  mythology  in  general, 
and  the  cause  of  its  continuance ;  I  shall  merely 
confine  myself  to  those  portions  of  it  which  are 
due  to  the  action  of  false  analogy.  A  large  part 
of  our  Aryan  mythology,  as  has  been  eloquently 
pointed  out  by  Professor  Max  Midler,  is  derived 
from  homonymes  and  synonymes,  from  phonetic 
decay,  and  the  attempt  to  explain  forgotten  words. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE.     377 

Daphne,  "  the  laurel,"  and  daphne,  "  the  dawn," 
came  both  from  the  root  dah,  ci  to  burn ;  "  what 
more  natural  than  that  the  dawn  should  be  changed 
into  a  laurel  in  her  flight  from  Apollo,  the  sun- 
god  ?  Prarnanthas,  "  the  fire-chark  "  of  the  Hindu, 
became  the  IIpofAr)6ev<;  of  the  Greek ;  and  the 
simple  contrivance  of  the  savage  for  the  production 
of  fire  passed  into  the  wise  benefactor  of  man, 
with  his  brother  Epimetheus  or  "  afterthought." 
The  various  tribes  with  names,  sometimes  explic- 
able, sometimes  obscure,  had  to  be  provided  with 
eponymous  heroes  ;  and  the  manifold  appellations 
assigned  to  the  same  object  of  worship  were  trans- 
formed into  as  many  separate  deities.  Led  by  a 
false  analogy,  men  argued  that  what  was  different 
or  alike  in  name,  must  also  be  different  or  alike 
in  reality  ;  and  so  a  whole  fairyland  was  built  up 
upon  the  mere  sound  of  words.  But  the  influence 
of  a  false  analogy  went  even  further  back  than 
this.  Before  the  primitive  man  had  learned  to 
distinguish  between  the  subject  and  the  object,  the 
actions  and  passions  of  the  thinker  were  trans- 
ferred to  the  inanimate.  So  the  sun  was  compared 
to  a  charioteer  or  a  one-eyed  monster,  and  the 
thunder  was  the  voice  of  God.  The  similes  in  all 
these  cases,  however,  were  still  between  ideas,  not 
words — still  belonged  to  thought,  not  to  its  ex- 
pression ;  but  when  they  had  once  been  enshrined 


378     THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE. 

in  language,  they  tended  to  grow  and  multiply, 
and  the  starting-point  was  no  longer  the  inability 
of  the  child  to  distinguish  between  himself  and  the 
object,  but  the  mere  verbal  metaphors  themselves. 
As  the  primitive  state  of  mind  passed  away,  the 
original  meaning  intended  to  be  conveyed  in  the 
traditional  phrases  was  forgotten  ;  the  myth  became 
purely  etymological,  and  the  solar  charioteer  was 
transformed  into  Phaethon,  and  the  one-eyed  mon- 
ster into  the  Kyklops.  The  simple  words,  divested 
of  their  real  signification,  were  associated  with 
others  which  represented  intelligible  notions  to  the 
users  of  them  ;  and  out  of  these  false  analogies 
grew  up  the  fantastic  shapes  of  many  a  legend 
and  myth.  The  human  mind  cannot  be  satisfied 
unless  it  can  assign  some  reason  for  the  existence 
of  a  thing,  unless  it  can  believe  that  it  understands 
it.  So  long  as  an  explanation  is  not  forthcoming, 
it  feels  itself  in  the  presence  of  something  mys- 
terious and  supernatural,  and  this  causes  all  the 
discomforts  of  fear  and  uncertainty.  The  expla- 
nation may  be  very  far  indeed  from  the  truth  ;  but 
so  long  as  any  can  be  given,  the  man  is  content. 
Now  in  order  to  explain  we  must  compare ;  it  is 
only  by  bringing  a  phenomenon  within  the  limits 
of  the  known  that  we  take  it  out  of  the  region  of 
the  inexplicable.  Hence  come  all  those  popular 
etymologies   which   interpret  unknown   terms   by 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE.     379 

words  of  the  same  or  similar  sound.  The  epony- 
mous heroes,  already  alluded  to,  who  have  been 
manufactured  out  of  the  names  of  tribes  and 
places,  are  a  case  in  point ;  here  the  attempt  to 
assign  definite  conceptions  to  the  words  themselves 
has  been  despaired  of,  and  they  have  accordingly 
been  explained  by  what  seemed  the  analogous 
instances  of  words  without  any  signification  of 
their  own,  but  which  served  to  denote  individuals. 
Proper  names  have  naturally  been  the  special  sub- 
ject of  popular  etymologising ;  there  is  nothing- 
else  in  language  which  so  quickly  and  thoroughly 
changes  its  form ;  and  yet,  since  everything  must 
have  a  reason,  the  assumption  is  irresistible  that 
they  once  had  a  meaning.  Thus,  as  my  friend 
the  Rev.  J.  Earle  tells  me,  there  are  two  neigh- 
bouring places  in  Somersetshire  called  Saltford 
and  Freshford.  The  first  was  originally  Sal-ford 
(Sallow-ford),  the  "  Willow-ford ;  "  but  when  the 
Saxon  Salh  (Salig)  died  out  of  use,  a  slight  change 
of  pronunciation  altered  the  unintelligible  Salford 
into  the  intelligible  Saltford,  a  change  facilitated  by 
the  neighbourhood  of  the  corresponding  Freshford. 
In  modern  Greece,  again,  we  see  the  same  process 
taking  place.  Thus  Athens  is  'Avdrjvai,,  "  the 
flowery,"  in  the  mouths  of  the  common  people ; 
Krisa  is  Xpvcro,  "  the  golden ;  "  and  a  legend  of  a 
quarrel  between  two  brothers  has  fastened  itself 


I 


380     THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE. 

upon  Delphi.1  Not  very  unlike  is  the  superstitious 
feeling  which  has  transmuted  the  forms  of  words 
of  ill-omened  sound.  Because  an  unfortunate 
event  was  called  malum,  and  a  fortunate  one  bonum, 
it  was  thought  that  the  words  themselves  brought 
good  and  evil  ;  and  so  Maleventum  was  changed 
into  Be?ieve?itum,  just  as  the  Erinyes  were  addressed 
as  the  Eumenides,  and  the  left  hand  as  "  the 
better  ;  ''  or  as,  in  modern  times,  the  Cape  of 
Storms  has  become  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  and 
the  custom  of  Ta-pu  is  perpetually  transforming 
the  languages  of  the  Pacific  islanders.2  But  other 
words  besides  proper  names  lose  their  true  form 
and  meaning  through  the  influence  of  imagi- 
nary analogies.  Thus  the  German  sundjluth, 
"  great  flood,"  has  had  the  first  syllable  assi- 
milated to  sunde,  "  sin,"  through  its  application  to 
the  Biblical  Deluge  ;  and  even  philosophy  has  been 
deceived  by  the  outward  resemblance  of  the  logical 
copula  to  the  substantive  verb,  while  Bacon  believed 
in  the  existence  of  sensible  qualities  answering 
to  the  abstract  nouns  derived  from  attributive 
adjectives. 

1  Deffner,  "  Neogncca,"  p.  307,  in  Curtius'  Studien,  iv.  2. 

2  Among  the  Eskimauz  of  Greenland,  any  oue  who  bears  the  same 
name  as  a  deceased  person  changes  it  in  order  to  deceive  and  escape 
from  death,  in  the  same  way  as  among  the  native  tribes  of  America, 
and  the  Sunda  islands. — (F.  Liebrecht  in  the  Academy,  Sept.  1st, 
1872.) 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE.     331 

Thus  far  this  popular  etymologising  is  uncon- 
scious and  instinctive.  But  it  becomes  more  or 
less  artificial  in  cases  like  those  which  meet  us  in 
the  Homeric  poems.  Thus  the  old  epic  adjective 
67T7]eTavo^,  "  long-lasting,"  from  i-ni}  aeo,  and 
relvco,  came  to  be  thought  to  be  derived  from  eVo? 
(^eros,  Sansk.  vatsas),  "  a  year,"  and  accordingly 
is  used  in  the  sense  of  "  lasting  for  a  year  "  more 
than  once  in  the  Odyssey  ;  while  7rA.ee?,  "  full,"  was 
fancied  to  be  a  contracted  form  of  ifkeloves,  iC  more," 
through  the  false  analogy  of  the  Ionic  wXeup,  irkelv, 
for  ifkiov  (that  is,  irXelov),  and  hence  we  will  find  the 
monstrous  solecism  oiwvoi  .  .  .  7rAee?  rje  yvvcurces, 
"  more  birds  than  women,"  in  II.  xi.  395.  So, 
again,  re'Ao-o?,  "  tilth,"  was  imagined  to  be  iden- 
tical with  Te\o?,  "  end  n  (as  in  II.  xiii.  707,  xviii. 
544),  and  the  aorist  infinitives  ^paia/nelv,  sfiheiv, 
handed  down  in  various  formulae  and  stereotyped 
verses,  were  believed  to  be  presents,  and  accord- 
ingly provided  with  the  futures  xPaL(T W\Gm  ar>d 
iSrjaco.  The  Odyssey  even  goes  a  step  further 
than  mere  unconscious  misunderstanding  of  the 
traditional  language  of  the  past ;  and  the  affecta- 
tion of  archaism  observable  in  it,  which  ignores, 
for  instance,  the  existence  of  writing,  even  to  the 
extent  of  making  a  Phseakian  supercargo  commit 
his  freight  to  memory,  renders  Spenser's  "  Fairy 
Queen  ';  its  best  analogue,  and  results  in  a  list  of 


382     THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE. 

similar  etymological  mistakes.1  A  good  parallel 
to  this  appearance  of  popular  etymologising  in 
literature  may  be  found  in  some  of  the  eccentri- 
cities of  modern  English  spelling.  Further,  the 
comparative  of  forth,  has  thus  been  spelt  and  ipco- 
nounced/c/rf/^r,  under  the  impression  that  it  was 
derived  from  far,  the  th  being  euphonic  or  some- 
thing of  that  kind ;  and  this  erroneous  etymology 
has  reacted  upon  the  meaning  of  the  word.  Whole, 
again,  the  by-form  of  hale  (the  Greek  ko\os),  has 
been  garnished  with  a  ?v,  through  the  supposed 
analogy  of  wheel  and  ?vhale,2  and  could,  from  can, 
has  received  an  I  because  should,  from  shall,  has 
one ;  and  all  this  in  defiance  of  pronunciation. 
The  authority  of  "Webster's  Dictionary  has  induced 
our  American  cousins  to  get  rid  of  the  unnecessary 
u  in  words  like  honour,  favour ;  but  instead  of  con- 
fining themselves  to  vocables  of  Latin  origin,  they 
have  extended  the  practice  to  totally  different  cases, 
like  harbour  and  neighbour.  It  is  only  the  philo- 
logist who  knows  the  deceitfulness  of  the  analogy. 

1  Od.  viii.  1G4.  The  Phccakians,  the  children  of  the  "bright" 
clouds,  are  the  representatives  of  Phoenician  commerce  and  naval 
activity  so  far  as  trade  details  are  concerned.  The  plain  reference 
to  the  Erekhtheum  of  Terikles  in  Od.  vii.  SI  makes  the  affectation 
of  archaism  all  the  more  startling. — (See  Paley,  Brit.  Quarterly, 
October  1873). 

-  Earle  ("  Philology  of  the  English  Tongue,"  p.  143,  1st  edit.) 
quotes  whote  for  hot  from  John  Philpot,  and  UTOiight  for  reached 
from  Mvles  Coverdale. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE.     383 

But  the  influence  of  analogy  upon  the  written 
form  of  words  leads  us  naturally  to  the  considera- 
tion of  the  way  in  which  it  has  acted  upon  what  is 
pre-eminently  the  cultured  expression  of  thought. 
Poetry  is  artificial  language  ;  it  is  the  endeavour 
to  express  the  best  ideas  in  the  best  manner  pos- 
sible, and,  after  the  form  has  thus  been  elaborated, 
to  secure  it  by  artificial  means  from  being  for- 
gotten. Hence  come  all  the  various  contrivances 
of  metrical  feet,  of  parallelism,  of  alliteration,  and 
of  rhyme.  Metrical  feet,  whether  quantitative  or 
qualitative  (that  is,  accentual),  is  the  satisfaction 
of  the  striving  after  analogical  harmony,  of  the 
desire  of  mind  and  ear  and  lips  for  the  like,  which 
lies  at  the  bottom  of  speech  itself.  In  the  paral- 
lelism of  Semitic  poetry  material  analogy  passes 
into  conceptual  analogy;  clause  answers  to  clause, 
stanza  to  stanza.  But  the  oldest  device  invented 
to  imprint  upon  speech  the  poetical  form,  and  to 
enable  the  memory  to  retain  it,  is  alliteration. 
Here  the  natural  tendency  to  repeat  the  same 
sound  or  combination  of  sounds  comes  into  full 
play  ;  and  so  alliteration  is  the  essential  charac- 
teristic of  barbarian  poetry  all  over  the  world,  from 
the  Kalewala  of  the  Finns  to  the  songs  of  the 
North  American  Indians.  It  has  been  an  especial 
favourite  with  the  Teutonic  race ;  all  our  old  Eng- 
lish  poetry  is   alliterative,    and  to  this    day  the 


384     THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY  IN  LANGUAGE. 

musicalness  which  we  recognise  in  the  verses  of 
certain  poets  is  due  to  this  cause.  Alliteration 
may  be  said  to  belong  to  the  beginnings  of  words, 
and  so  to  correspond  with  rhyme,  which  affects  the 
ends  of  words.  Rhyme  is  the  fulfilment  of  the 
expectation  of  discovering  an  analogy  between  final 
sounds.  It  may  be  detected  here  and  there  in  the 
poetry  of  most  nations ;  examples  of  it,  for  in- 
stance, are  to  be  met  with  in  the  Old  Testament, 
and  the  charm  of  the  Latin  pentameter  is  enhanced 
by  the  rhyming  of  the  last  syllables  of  the  two 
penthemimers.  But  it  has  attained  its  fullest 
development  in  modern  European  poetry.  Accord- 
ing to  Nigra  its  origin  is  Keltic ;  but  however 
that  may  be,  the  Romance  languages,  such  as  Pro- 
vencal and  Italian,  with  their  words  terminating 
in  the  same  sounds — the  worn  remnants  of  Latin 
flection — seemed  created  for  the  application  of 
rhyme.  No  doubt  the  Latin  poems  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  in  which  a  jingle  had  to  take  the  place' of 
forgotten  quantity,  helped  considerably  towards 
the  same  end.  The  child  of  the  South,  rhyme,  was 
soon  transplanted  to  the  North,  and  became  a 
successful  rival  of  alliteration  in  Teutonic  poetry. 
But  it  could  never  win  the  same  influence  in  lan- 
guages which  abounded  in  monosyllabic  words  as 
it  had  in  the  Neo-Latin  dialects,  for  the  simple 
reason  that  such  an  ornamental  help  to  the  me- 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ANALOGY   IN  LANGUAGE.      3S5 

morv  ought  rather  to  affect  unmeaning  and  merelv 
euphonic  final  syllables  than  words  every  letter  of 
which  is  instinct  with  life  and  signification.  Hence 
the  strong  hold  that  alliteration  still  has  upon  our 
taste;  hence  the  fact  that  our  greatest  poems  have 
been  written  in  blank  verse  ;  hence,  too,  our  pre- 
ference for  double  rhymes,  our  dislike  to  a  per- 
petual rhyming  of  monosyllables. 

With  poetry,  the  highest  effort  of  the  human 
mind  consciously  to  shape  and  fashion  language, 
we  must  close  our  review  of  the  influence  of  ana- 
logy. I  have  tried  to  show  how  immense  is  its 
power  throughout  the  whole  domain  of  speech, 
and  how  it  is  present  everywhere  as  a  creative  and 
reconstructing  principle.  Whether  the  analogy 
be  true  or  false,  whether  it  act  upon  the  matter 
or  the  form,  is  of  little  consequence.  Phonology, 
accidence,  syntax,  and  signification  are  all  equally 
affected  by  it  ;  while  the  poetry  of  the  people, 
which  is  based  upon  unreal  ideas — ideas,  that  is, 
which  have  nothing  actual  and  objective  answer- 
ing to  them — is  not  less  the  product  of  its  cease- 
less activity  than  the  poetry  of  literature,  where 
the  form  alone  is  unreal  and  artificial,  a  lano-ua^e 
never  spoken  in  the  work-a-day  world. 


L'  B 


APPENDIX 


^Ta  b  r  a 

UK  SITY   of 

A. 


APPENDIX. 


TAe  lioute  followed  by  the  Western  Aryans  in  their 
Migration  into  Europe. 

One  of  the  historical  questions  raised  by  the  study  of 
language,  and  to  which  the  study  of  language  must  fur- 
nish the  answer,  is  the  road  by  which  our  Aryan  fore- 
fathers entered  Europe.  I  assume  it  to  have  been  proved 
that  their  original  home  was  in  Asia,  and  more  parti- 
cularly in  the  high  plateau  of  the  Hindu  Kush.  When 
Comparative  Philology  first  sets  them  before -our  view, 
they  had  left  anything  like  primitive  barbarism  far  be- 
hind, and  had  reached  a  considerable  degree  of  civilisa- 
tion. They  were  herdsmen  and  cultivators,  living  in 
houses  and  communities,  with  settled  customs  and 
government,  and  even  acquainted  with  the  use  of  metals. 
Such  a  state  of  culture  points  to  a  comparatively  late 
stage  of  development,  indefinitely  removed  from  that 
imaginary  root-period  discovered  by  the  analyst  which  re- 
presents the  earliest  epoch  of  Aryan  speech  to  which  we 
can  attain.     Now,  I  conceive  Fick  to  have  demonstrated 


ft 


390  APPENDIX. 

against  Schmidt,1  that  the  West  or  European  Aryans 
lived  together  in  a  body  after  their  separation  from  their 
Eastern  brethren  in  Asia,  and  that  the  different  branches 
of  the  European  family  did  not  break  off  from  the  parent 
stock  until  after  the  arrival  of  that  stock  in  Europe.  Just 
as  there  was  a  primitive  Aryan  language,  therefore,  so 
was  there  a  primitive  European  language,  and  the  branch- 
ing off  of  East  and  "West  Aryan  was  paralleled  by  the 
branching  off  of  Lithuanic,  Slavonic,  Keltic,  Teutonic, 
Italic,  and  Hellenic.  The  question,  then,  arises,  Did  the 
speakers  of  this  primitive  European  language  move  west- 
ward north"  or  south  of  the  Caspian,  through  the  Sagar- 
tian  desert,  Media,  Armenia,  and  Asia  Minor,  or  through 
the  steppes  of  Tatary  and  across  the  Ural  range  ? 

The  old  belief  was  that  the  course  taken  by  our  ances- 
tors was  southward  of  the  Caspian,  and  that  bodies  of 
the  emigrants  were  left  behind  on  the  march  in  Media, 
Armenia,  and  Asia  Minor.  The  science  of  language  soon 
showed,  however,  that  both  the  Medic  and  Armenian 
lanGfuasres  belong  to  the  Iranic  stock,  and  micdit  therefore 
be  regarded  as  offshoots  from  Persia,  while  Fick  has 
lately  made  it  clear  that  the  Aryan  dialects  of  Asia  Minor, 
of  which  Phrygian  may  be  considered  the  representative, 
belong  incontestably  to  the  European  group.  This  is  in 
full  harmony  with  the  Greek  tradition  that  the  Briges  or 
Phrygians  had  originally  migrated  from  Thrakia,2  and 
with  the  resemblances  that  Plato  detected  between  Greek 
and  Phrygian  words.3     As  I  have  elsewhere  pointed  out,4 

1  Die  ehemalige  Spracheinheit  d.   Indo-Germaneu  Europas.  1S73. 
*  Hilt.  vii.  73  ;  viii.   138.     Strabo,  xiv.  618  ;  x.  471 ;  vii.  295. 
Arrian  ap.  Eu6tath.  on  Dionys.  Ferierg.  322. 

3  Kratylus,  410  a.  4  Academy,  May  30th,  1874. 


APPENDIX.  39 1 

the  want  of  iron  in  the  pre-Hellenic  remains  found  by 
Ur  Schliemann  at  Hissarlik,  shows  there  could  have  been 
no  intercourse  between  the  west  coast  of  Asia  Minor 
and  the  great  metal-workers  beyond  the  Halys.  The 
Assyrian  inscriptions,  too,  would  lead  us  to  infer  that  no 
Aryan  nations  were  settled  eastward  of  that  river,  at  all 
events,  in  the  12th  century  B.C.,  and  the  cuneiform 
inscriptions  found  at  Van  and  its  neighbourhood  are 
written  in  a  language  which,  though  flectional,  is  not 
Aryan,  and  probably  belongs  to  the  Alarodian  group  of 
speech  of  which  Georgian  may  be  taken  as  a  type.  "We 
find  no  traces  of  the  Aryan  in  Armenia  or  even  Media 
before  the  8th  century  B.C.  The  Assyrians  first  became 
acquainted  with  the  Medes,  or  Amadai  as  they  then  called 
them,  in  the  reign  of  Shalmaneser  III.  (840  B.C.),  when 
they  lived  far  to  the  East,  the  Parsuas  or  Parthians 
intervening  between  them  and  Assyria.  It  is  not  till  the 
age  of  Eimmon-nirari,  about  790  B.C.,  that  they  had 
advanced  into  the  country  known  as  Media  Ehagiana  to 
the  classical  geographers.  The  legends  of  the  Vendidad 
represent  the  westward  advance  of  the  Iranians  as  slow 
and  gradual,  while  the  Aryan  language  of  the  Iron  or 
Ossetes  in  the  Caucasus  is,  like  the  Armenian  and  the 
Kurd,  a  member  of  the  Iranic  stock.  Our  evidence  is 
complete  that  if  the  European  branch  of  the  Aryan  family 
moved  into  its  present  home  along  the  southern  shores  of 
the  Caspian,  it  left  no  stragglers  on  the  way,  no  tokens  to 
mark  its  road.  The  Aryan  dialects  of  this  part  of  Asia 
are  late  emigrants  from  Persia,  and  the  Aryan  settlers 
in  Asia  Minor  crossed  from  Europe  to  invade  the  old 
inhabitants  of  the  country. 

Now  one  of  the  most  curious  discoveries  that  have 


4 


392  APPENDIX. 

resulted  from  the  decipherment  of  the  records  of  Assyria 
and  Babylonia  is  that  the  whole  of  the  district  included 
in  Assyria,  Chaldea,  Susiana,  and  Media  was  originally 
inhabited  by  a  Turanian  race  with  agglutinative  languages, 
who  invented  the  cuneiform  system  of  writing,  built  the 
great  cities,  and  founded  the  monarchies  of  the  kingdoms 
of  the  Tigris  and  Euphrates,  and  were,  in  fact,  the  pioneers 
of  civilisation  in  Western  Asia.  Their  traditions  pointed 
to  a  cradle  in  the  mountainous  region  south-west  of  the 
Caspian,  and  the  mountain  of  Nizir  in  the  land  of 
Gutium,  between  the  34th  and  3Gth  parallels  of  latitude 
(the  present  peak  of  Elwand,  as  it  would  seem),  was  the 
sacred  spot  on  which  the  ark  had  rested,  and  mankind 
had  found  its  second  birthplace. 

The  Accadian,  Susianian,  and  Protomedic  languages, 
which  have  been  brought  to  light  by  the  progress  of  cunei- 
form research,  are  more  or  less  closely  related  to  one  an- 
other and  to  the  modern  dialects  of  the  Ugric  group.  It 
has  lon^  asro  been  shown  that  the  ancestors  of  the  Finns 
must  have  come  from  a  southern  Asiatic  home,  and  the 
very  names  Suomi  and  Akkarak,  given  in  their  tradi- 
tions to  the  primeval  divisions  of  the  race,  Akkarak  by 
the  way  having  no  longer  an  etymology  in  Finnish,  are 
strangely  like  Sumir  and  Accad,  the  two  cantons  of  Tur- 
anian Babylonia.1  The  legends  of  the  creation,  the  flood, 
the  giants,  and  the  monsters  contained  in  the  Epic  of  the 
half-savage  Voguls,  resemble  those  of  ancient  Chaldea,- 
and  reuta,  the  Finnic  name  for  "  iron,"  seems  to  claim  re- 
lationship witli  the  Accadian  urud  "bronze."3     It  would 

1  Lenormant  "  La  Magic  chez  les  Chalddens,''  pp.  272,  '273. 
'  See  Attain:  "  Uu  Geneso Vogoulo"  in  the  "llevue  de  Philologie," 
i.  (1874). 

'  Sec  Lenormant  "  Les  Premieres  Civilisations,"  i.  p.  119. 


APPENDIX.  393 

appear  that  the  Finnic  branch  of  the  Turanian  family 
moved  northward  across  the  Caucasus  and  westward  of 
the  Caspian  to  the  Ural  range ;  but  the  present  position 
of  the  Tatar,  Mongolian,  and  Tungusic  members  of  the 
family,  with  which  Accadian  shares  remarkable  similar- 
ities both  in  vocabulary  and  grammar,  would  imply  that 
the  Median  cradle  was  a  second  and  not  a  first  starting- 
point  of  the  race.  However  that  may  be,  the  whole  strip 
of  country  from  the  Caspian  to  the  Persian  Gulf  was  in 
the  possession  of  a  Turanian  population  at  the  earliest 
time  to  which  we  can  go  back,  and  there  is  little  pro- 
bability that  the  flow  of  Aryan  migration  towards 
Europe  had  begun  before  the  occupation  of  this  part  of 
the  world  by  the  Turanians. 

Now  I  have  been  unable  to  detect  any  traces  of  Aryan 
influence  in  Accadian  and  its  allied  languages.  Had  the 
Aryan  emigrants  forced  their  way  through  the  Turanian 
population  of  the  country,  it  is  hardly  probable  that  a  few 
Indo-European  words  at  least  would  not  have  found  their 
way  into  the  Accadian  vocabulary.  Of  course  no  account 
can  be  taken  of  resemblances  in  sound  and  meaning  that 
may  exist  between  Aryan  and  Accadian  roots  ;  whatever 
may  be  the  explanation  of  these,  the  Aryans  had  left 
their  root-period  far  behind  them  when  our  European 
ancestors  started  on  their  westward  wanderings,  and  if 
the  Accadians  borrowed  at  all  it  would  be  fully  formed 
words  and  not  roots.  But  the  Accadian  lexicon  is 
wholly  free  from  any  signs  of  such  a  borrowing,  and 
when  we  consider  that  it  is  the  same  with  the  Assyrian 
lexicon  also,  we  seem  driven  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
Turanian  population  of  Media  and  the  regions  of  the 
Tigris  and  Euphrates,  as  well  as  their  Semitic  conquerors 


394  AFPENDIX. 

and  successors,  never  came  into  immediate  contact  with 
an  Aryan  tribe  until  the  late  period  when  Aryan  Medes 
and  Akhaemenian  Persians  appear  upon  the  scene.  It 
is  not  until  the  time  of  Assur-bani-pal  or  Sardanapalus, 
in  the  7th  century  B.C.,  that  Aryan  glosses  are  found 
upon  the  Assyrian  tablets,  and  these  belong  to  the 
Persian  branch  of  the  family.  Thus  urdliu,  the  Zend 
eredhiva,  is  given  as  a  synonyme  of  "  high,"  and  Mitra  as 
a  synonyme  of  "the  sun."  Everything  bears  out  the 
inference  already  arrived  at  upon  other  grounds,  that  the 
Western  Aryans  must  have  entered  Europe  by  a  road 
that  had  led  them  to  the  north  and  not  to  the  south  of 
the  Caspian. 

But  a  further  conclusion  besides  this  may  be  drawn 
from  the  absence  of  any  Aryan  influence  upon  so  ancient 
a  monument  of  speech  as  the  Accadian.  If  that  language 
shows  no  signs  of  contact  with  Aryan,  from  a  date  inde- 
finitely earlier  than  the  third  millennium  B.C.,  when 
the  Accadians  had  already  long  left  their  mountain-cradle 
in  the  north  and  had  settled  themselves  in  Babylonia, 
the  speakers  of  Aryan  on  the  one  side,  and  of  that  group 
of  languages  of  which  Accadian  is  a  representative  on 
the  other,  can  scarcely  have  been  known  one  to  another. 
The  Sac;artian  desert  must  have  been  an  effectual  barrier 
between  them,  and  the  Caspian  Gates  had  not  yet  been 
forced  by  invaders  from  the  East. 

But  now  there  arises  a  very  curious  question.  Gerland, 
in  his  book  on  the  Odyssey,1  has  tried  to  show,  by  the  help 
of  Comparative  Mythology,  that  the  primitive  Aryans 
lived  on  the  shores  of  a  great  inland  sea,  under  whose 

1  "  Altgriechische  Miirclien  iu  der  Odyssee."      Magdeburg,  1869. 


APPENDIX.  395 

waves  the  sun  sank  evening  after  evening.  Humboldt 
believed  that  the  sea  of  Aral  is  the  remains  of  such  an 
expanse  of  water  which,  at  no  very  remote  period, 
included  the  Caspian  and  Euxine,  and  this  opinion  has 
been  confirmed  by  recent  researches.1  We  should  then 
have  the  primitive  Aryans  on  one  side  of  this  vast  lake, 
and  the  primitive  Ugrian  tribes  on  the  other  side,  the 
desert  nature  of  the  country  which  lay  between  the  two 
settlements  preventing  any  communication  except  by 
water.  Did  such  a  communication  by  water  ever  take 
place?  The  evidence  derived  from  the  want  of  any  traces 
of  Aryan  influence  in  Accadian  enables  us  to  answer  in 
the  negative,  and  the  little  acquaintance  with  maritime 
pursuits  which  Comparative  Philology  shows  the  primi- 
tive Aryans  to  have  had,  confirms  the  conclusion.  We 
may  safely  believe  that  our  remote  forefathers  set  out  on 
their  journey  towards  the  west  by  land  and  not  by  sea, 
that  the  Sagartian  desert  barred  their  progress  on  the 
south,  and  that  consequently  the  route  they  adopted 
was  that  which  led  them  along  the  northern  shores  of 
the  Caspian.  Europe  would  therefore  have  been  entered 
through  Russia,  and  we  may  discover  a  reflection  of  the 
bleak  and  wintry  character  of  the  region  the  emigrants 
had  to  traverse,  in  the  fact  that  the  fir  (-/Vl/?,  pinus,  Sansk. 
■pitu-darus)  and  the  birch  (seep.  203)  were  the  only  trees 
whose  names  were  remembered  by  the  European  Aryans 
after  their  long  wanderings.  The  path  they  had  chosen 
was  again  followed,  as  it  would  seem,  after  the  lapse  of 
many  centuries  by  the   Scyths    or   Sarmatians,  whose 

1  See  Sporer  in  Petermann's  Mittheilungen  (1868-72),  audNature, 
May  20,  1875. 

2  Monatsbericht  d.  Konigl.  Akademie  d.  TYiss.  zu  Berlin,  2  Aug. 
1366,  pp.  549  sg. 


396  APPENDIX. 

language  has  been  proved  by  Mullenhoff 2  to  be  Iranian, 
and  so  connected  with  those  of  the  Persians,  the  Medes, 
and  the  Bactrians.  Like  the  Scyths  they  may  have  re- 
lapsed into  a  nomad  life  while  passing  through  the  in- 
hospitable steppes  of  Tatary  and  Eussia  j  at  all  events, 
it  was  not  until  they  had  settled  on  the  western  shores 
of  the  Black  Sea  (or  possibly  on  those  of  the  Baltic),  that 
they  broke  up  into  the  several  races  of  Aryan  Europe,  as 
is  shown  by  the  agreement  of  the  European  languages 
in  the  words  that  relate  to  the  sea,  and  in  the  name  of 
the  beeclt,  which  only  grows  westward  of  a  line  drawn 
from  Kunigsberg  to  the  Crimea. 


II. 

Origin  of  the  case-endings  in  Aryan. 

After  the  larger  part  of  the  preceding  pages  had  been 
printed,  I  came  across  an  extremely  able  and  suggestive 
article  by  Bergaigne,  which  has  been  published  in  the 
••  Memoires  de  la  Society  de  Linguistique  de  Paris"  (torn, 
ii.,  fasc.  5),  under  the  title  "  Du  Role  de  la  Derivation 
dans  la  declinaison  Indo-Europ^enne."  I  have  long  be- 
lieved that  an  unprejudiced  and  thorough-going  exa- 
mination of  the  Aryan  declension  would  show  that  its 
origin  was  similar  to  that  of  the  Semitic  noun,  the  cases 
being  differentiated  as  the  need  for  them  arose  out  of 
various  more  or  less  unmeaning  terminations  or  "suffixes 
of  derivation"  if  the  latter  phrase  be  preferred.  M. 
Bergaigne  has  made  it  clear  that  this  is  the  fact,  and  has 


APPENDIX.  397 

thus  provided  a  way  of  escape  for  believers  in  pro- 
nominal roots  out  of  the  difficulties  in  which  they  are 
involved.  In  almost  every  line  we  may  trace  the  assump- 
tion that  Glottology  begins  with  the  sentence  and  not  the 
word,  though  it  is  never  definitely  expressed;  and  the  only 
logical  conclusion  that  can  be  drawn  from  the  results  of 
the  author's  researches  is,  that  so  far  as  the  declension 
of  the  noun  is  concerned  it  has  grown  out  of  a  process  of 
adaptation  and  not  of  agglutination.  As  he  remarks 
very  justly,  we  cannot  assign  the  formation  of  the  cases 
to  the  same  process  as  that  whereby  they  have  been 
replaced  in  the  later  stage  of  analysis ;  and  to  suppose 
that  a  preposition  (like  bhi)  could  have  been  employed 
as  a  post-position  to  form  a  case,  is  not  only  to  forget 
that  prepositions  are  a  very  late  growth,  but  also  to 
ignore  the  distinction  between  prepositions  and  post- 
positions. I  have  myself  been  led  away  by  what  I 
believed  to  be  the  evidence  of  the  Pada-text  of  the  Bi°-- 
Veda  to  allow  the  agglutinative  character  of  the  suffix 
bhi  (p.  284),  though  I  have  noticed  that  the  preposition 
with  which  it  has  been  connected  is  not  bhi  but  abld  or 
dbhi  formed  by  means  of  the  very  suffix  in  question. 
That  bhi  originally  imported  no  specific  meaning  into 
the  noun  is  clear  from  its  being  common  to  many  cases  on 
the  one  hand  (the  dative  and  locative  in  Old  Slavonic, 
for  instance,  being  te-be,  the  genitive  te-be  and  the  instru- 
mental to-boja),  and  on  the  other  from  its  being  absent  in 
certain  languages  in  some  cases  in  wThich  it  appears  in  the 
cognate  dialects.  Thus  in  Sanskrit  we  have  'sivais  by  the 
side  of  'sive-bhis  and  in  Latin  domhiis  or  rosis  by  the  side 
of  arcubus  or  deabus.  In  the  dative  plural  in  Gothic, 
and  the  instrumental  and  dative  plural  and  dual  in  Old 


398  APPENDIX. 

Slavonic  and  Lithuanian,  it  is  replaced  by  sma  or  smi,  a 
suffix  which  we  meet  again  in  the  Sanskrit  pronouns 
ta-sma-i,  ta-sma-t ;  a-smd-n,  yu-shmd-n.  M.  Bergaigne 
is  doubtless  right  in  making  it  the  same  "  suffix  of 
derivation  "  as  that  which  we  find  in  the  Sanskrit garda- 
hha-s  "  an  ass,"  and  vrisha-bha-s  "  a  bull,"  or  the  Greek 
tXa-(Do-g,  tu-po-c,  x.Pora-<po-s  or  xoew-pij.1 

The  most  important  point  brought  out  by  his  investiga- 
tions is,  that  an  essential  difference  exists  between  the 
strong  cases  (nominative,  accusative,  and  vocative)  and 
the  weak  cases,  the  former  being  primarily  so  many  ab- 
stracts and  the  latter  mere  adjectives  used  adverbially. 
The  formatives  of  the  strong  cases  (-as  [-as],  -i  [-i],  -a  [-ya], 
-an)  continued  to  the  last  to  mark  abstracts  like  Sanskrit 
dhan  "  day,"  Ivpi  "  writing,"  vrajyd  "  act  of  travelling," 
mudd  "joy,"  Greek  puy-jj;  and  the  same  Sanskrit  form 
vdlcas  is  differentiated  in  Greek  into  the  plural  o-=c  and 
the  singular  t^oc.  Originally,  however,  vdkas  expressed 
no  distinction  either  of  number  or  of  gender,  and  how 
little  the  termination  had  to  do  with  case  is  shown  by 
its  appearing  in  the  oblique  cases  as  in  the  Greek  rrobsa- 
a  or  rrodoJv  ( =  co5=<r-wv),  where  the  accentuation  of  the 
strong  cases  is  followed.  In  short,  the  strong  cases,  with 
all  their  varieties  of  number  and  gender,  were  gradually 
evolved  out  of  abstract  nouns  which  were  fitted  with 
a  multitude  of  meaningless  suffixes.  Hence  we  can  un- 
derstand why  the  final  s  is  wanting  in  so  many  plural 
nominatives  and  accusatives,  or  why  the  same  suffix 
may  belong  indifferently  to  all  three  genders. 

As  for  the  weak  cases,  like  the  genitive  in  -sya,  which 

i  Curtius  has  already  anticipated  him  in  this:  see  hi*  "  Zur 
Chronologic,"  &c,  p.  79,  aud  "  Jahn's  Jahrbucher,"  60,  p.  95. 


APPENDIX.  399 

has  long  ago  been  compared  with  the  suffix  of  such 
Greek  adjectives  as  brnxo-cio-g1  or  the  Sanskrit  pronouns 
ta-sya-i,  ta-syd-s,  they  have  all  grown  out  of  adjectives 
taken  adverbially.  In  many  of  the  forms  one  suffix  has 
been  added  to  another;  thus  the  -kwa  (swa)  and  -ffi  (sivi) 
of  the  Zend  and  Greek  locatives  unite  the  suffixes  -a  and 
-i  to  the  suffix  -5?*.  M.  Bergaigne  reserves  a  discussion 
of  the  terminations  -s,  -t,  and  -m,  as  well  as  of  the  verbal 
endings  to  a  future  period,  but  it  is  plain  to  what  origin 
he  would  refer  them. 

Almost  cotemporaneously  with  M.  Bergaigne's  article 
a  pamphlet  has  appeared  in  Germany  by  Gustav  Meyer, 
called  "  Zur  Geschichte  der  indogermanischen  Stamm- 
bildumr  und  Declination,"  which  embodies  somewhat 
similar  views,  though  the  author  does  not  go  so  far  as 
the  French  philologist.  Thus  he  says  (p.  3)  : — "  Here  at 
the  outset  I  must  express  my  conviction  that  the  parent 
Aryan  contained  an  uncommonly  great  variety  of  forma- 
tions without  any  real  distinction  [of  meaning],  or  at  all 
events  without  any  apparent  to  us,  and  that  this  variety 
came  gradually  to  be  restricted  through  the  develop- 
ing classificatory  power  of  the  understanding."  These 
numerous  "  synonymous  formations,"  he  thinks  (p.  3), 
might  have  been  distinguished  from  one  another  by  tone 
and  gesture,  though  all  traces  of  such  a  mode  of  distinction 
are  of  course  now  lost.  Meyer  also  makes  an  attempt  to 
analyse  the  personal  pronouns.     He  rejects  the  suggestion 

1  As  a  in  Greek  is  generally  lost  between  two  vowels,  this  suffix  is 
perhaps  rather  to  be  referred  to  -tya  than  -sya.  Both  suffixes,  how- 
ever, performed  the  same  function  j  and  they  bore  the  same  relation 
to  one  another  as  sa  and  ta. 


400  APPENDIX. 

that  in  agli-am  {ego)  we  have  the  root  agh  "to  speak/'1 
on  the  ground  that  the  name  of  "  the  speaker  "  was  too 
abstract  for  the  primitive  Aryan,  and  prefers  to  analyse 
agham  into  a-gha-m,  tracing  the  first  element  in  a  number 
of  forms  which  denote  the  third  person.  "  This  promis- 
cuous use  [of  the  same  word],"  he  adds,  "for  the  first  and 
third  persons,  is  plain  evidence  how  little  a  distinct  dif- 
ference of  meaning  resided  in  these  pronominal  roots  ; ;' 
though  the  truer  conclusion  would  be  that  the  substan- 
tives  from  which  they  have  really  come  might  be  used  for 
either  one  of  the  three  persons.  He  goes  on  to  observe 
that  "the  confusion  between  the  first  and  second  person, 
which  meets  us  in  the  stem  va-,  is  even  more  striking." 
One  other  point  that  he  brings  out  is  the  difficulties  in- 
volved by  the  assumption  of  one  uniform  parent-speech. 
"  I,  on  the  contrary,"  he  says,  "  am  convinced  that  no 
small  number  of  what  we  may  term  dialectic  differences 
prevailed  in  it,  which  have  partly  been  preserved  in 
the  several  [Aryan]  languages."  Thus  we  seem  com- 
pelled to  admit  the  co-existence  of  the  forms  sa  and  tat 
for  the  demonstrative.  Professor  Whitney  in  his  new 
work  on  "The  Life  and  Growth  of  Language  "  (p.  177), 
has  expressed  himself  strongly  against  the  views  upon 
this  subject  which — after  the  example  of  Professor  Max 
Miiller — I  have  endeavoured  to  set  forth  in  the  present 
volume.  But  he  seems  to  me  to  confuse  the  question  of 
the  origin  of  languages — a  question  which  lies  beyond 
the  province  of  Glottology— with  that  of  their  remotest 
besmnimrs  to  which  our  data  allow  us  to  iro  back.     As 

1  As  in   Latin  ad-ag-ium,  Creek   -q-fxl,  Goth,  af-aik-a  :  Curtius 
"  Grundziige  "  (2d  edit.),  p.  357. 


APPENDIX.  401 

glottologists  merely,  we  have  nothing  to  do  with  the 
process  by  which  languages  were  made  ;  for  us  they  can 
exist  only  in  a  society,  and  must  therefore  have  been  as 
multitudinous  as  the  early  communities  that  spoke  them. 
Of  course  mutual  intelligibility  required  that  one  dialect 
only  should  be  spoken  within  the  same  community, 
allowance  being  made  for  individual  differences  of  speech. 
How  far  similar  conditions  of  life  and  thought,  of  food  and 
climate,  may  have  independently  produced  a  similar  form 
of  language  in  neighbouring  but  isolated  societies,  is  a 
question  which  we  have  no  means  of  answering. 


2  c 


INDEX. 


INDEX. 


A,  pronunciation  of,  in  English,  358 
Abbadie,  M.  d',  22,  26,  105,  274, 

275,  323 
Ablaut,  149  _ 

what  it  is,  165,  216 

Absquatulate,  its  origin,  256 
Abstracts,    wanting    in    primitive 

languages,  81,  89,  221 

origin  of  the  strong  cases,  398 

Accadian,  71,  75,  95,  109,  111,  135, 

140,  143,  146,  154,  164,  207,  242, 

268,  275,  277,  288,  292,  293,  338, 

392 

laws,  210 

Accent,  nature  and  importance  of, 

30 
why  thrown  on  first  member 

of  compound  in  Greek,  32 

influenced  by  analogy,  352 

in  Irish  and  Welsh,  Polish  and 

Bohemian,  354 

iEolic  and  Latin,  late,  354 

Doric,  354 

Accusative  case,  origin  of,  151 

older  than  nominative,  286 

^olic  dialect,  10,  19,  354 

JZvum,  24 

"A<pvos,  11 

Age,  derivation  of,  24 

Agglutinative  languages,  ix.,  xx., 

110,  132,  137,  287,  288 
do  not  form  cases  by  the  help 

of  pronouns,  154,  163 
Aharyus,  311 

Aimerai,  derivation  of,  28 
Aivil  (Etruscan),  24,  114 


Aji  dahaka,  11,  307 
Akhilles,  311,  319 
Albanian  genealogies,  316 
Algonquin,  has  no  verbs  "be''  and 

"have,"  135 

tenses  in,  95 

origin  of  totemism  in,  325 

Allegory,  how  distinguished  from 

myth,  323 
Alliteration,  383 
Allophylian  languages,  101 
Alphabet,  Phoenician,  whence  de- 
rived, 208 

primitive  Aryan,  246 

Sanskrit,  247 

Amavi,  origin  of,  160 

American  languages,  81, 94,178,279, 

298 

pronunciation,  causes  of,  201 

spelling,  382 

Analogy,  19,  201,  346  sq. 

produces  new  grammar,  347, 

362  sq. 

false  and  true,  347,  352,  378 

changes  the  vocabulary,  348 

origin  of,  348 

creates  new  ideas,  351,  373 

influences    accent,    quantity, 

and  pronunciation,  352  sq. 

explains  Grimm's  law,  359 

in  the  Latin  verb,  367 

changes  structure,  370 

influences  syntax,  370 

creates  myth  and  poetry,  375 

sq. 
influence  of,  on  poetry,  383 


406 


INDEX. 


Analytic,  Inter  than  synthetic,  167 

Analytical  languages,  132,  197 

stage,  231 

Ancessi,  M.  V.,  19,  365 

Ancestor-worship,  328 

Aorist,  Greek,  93 

Apas,  48 

Ap-nas,  11 

Apposition,  origin  of  the  genitive 
relation,  288,  292 

Aqua,  48 

Aramaic,   supplanted  cognate  idi- 
oms, 178 

emphatic  aleph  in,  186 

language  of  trade,  209 

Aristophanes  of  Byzantium,  31 

Arrkabo,  origin  of,  211 

Article,  the,  271 

postfixed,  186 

in  old  Egyptian,  272 

Aryans,  Western,  road  by  which 
they  entered  Europe,  389  sq. 

Aryan  languages,  not  a  universal 
type,  65 

— -  why  specially  studied,  66, 
70 

.  exceptional,  72,  87,  223,  227 

cradle  of,  105 

differ  from  Semitic,  76,  104, 

108,  290 

parent-speech  of,  ideal,  125 

evolved  out  of  dialects,  128 

uncivilised,  and  yet  inflec- 
tional, 144 

inflections  of,  analysed.  148 

never  agglutinative,  167 

or  isolating,  168 

roots  of,  may  be  decomposed, 

239  sq. 

dual  and  plural  in,  282  sq. 

-  —  genitive  in,  290 

verb  in.  29  1 

every  language  may  be  made, 

116 
.1  -.  I  18 

\->>k:i,   843 

Assamese,  186,  19:'.,  194 

Assvrian.  78.  91.  163,  1ST.  207,  247, 
252,  261,  285,  289,  324,  338,  357, 
363,  366,  370 

contract  tablets,  20! > 

Athena,  11 


Athens,  how  pronounced  in  modern 

Greek,  379 
Athwya,  11 
Attila,  317 
Aufrecht,  69 

Arenir,  derivation  of,  185 
Avesta,  11,  307,  309 

Babylonia,  cradle  of  Semitic  cul- 
ture, 208 

Babylonian  mythology,  338 

Balcony,  accent  of,  201,  353 

Ba-ntu,  71,  75,  229,  290,  363 

Bases  or  themes  or  stems.  159 

Basque,  affinities  of,  21,  101,  111 

dialects  of,  22,  87 

changes  n  into  h.  23 

characteristics  of,  66, 117.  180 

and  Aryan,  117,  190 

incorporates  the  pronouns,  94, 

135,  146,  293 

preservation  of,  180 

called  Eskuara,  199 

terms  for  knife,  203 

numerals  in,  206 

ceremonial     conjugation     in, 

229 

cyclops,  323 

plural  in.  275,  277 

iter,  derivation  of,  301 

Beneventum,  380 

Benfey,  Prof.,  53,  255 

Berber  grammar.  196 

Bergaigne,  M.  396 

Bhi,  preposition,  284,  397 

Bhu,  148 

Bi  (Basque),  109 

Bini,  derivation  of.  20(1 

Birch,  derivation  of,  203. 

Blade,  M..  206 

Blasphemous,  accent  of,  353 

Bleek,   Dr,  71,  7.".,  198,  200,  229, 
2:::..  211.  266  sq.,  294,363 

Boomerang,  whence  derived,  183 

Bopp,  66 

Borrowed  words,  202  sq. 

do  not  prove  a  negative,  202 

rules  for  determining,  204  .«-■'/. 

Brahmins,  not  a  pure  race,  175 

Brasenose,  derivation  of.  301 

Brother,  derivation  of,  222 

Brunehaut,  i  17 


INDEX. 


407 


Buddha,  306 

Buddhism,   democratic,    176,  261, 

306,  310 
compared  with  Christianity, 

342,  343 
Bulgarian    postfixes    the    article, 

185 
Burmese,  numerals  in,  270,  280 
Burnouf,  11 
-6 us,  origin  of,  268 
Bushmen,  language  of,  276 
Buttmann,  10 

Calefio,  152 
Canada,  dialect  of,  49 
Candelabrum,  derivation  of,  160 
Canoe,  whence  derived,  183 
Cape  of  Good  Hope,  whence  named. 

3S0 
Carcassonne,  origin  of,  318 
Carchemish,  centre  of  trade,  209 
Carlyle,  Mr  T.,  27,  374 
Cases,  analysis  of,  150,  396  sq. 

coexistent  with  flection,  155 

not  independent  words,  162, 

255 

whence  the  name,  262,  286 

Caucasus,  meaning  of,  119 

Caucasian  dialects,  118 

Cauneas,  18 

"  Cerebral  "  letters  in  Sanskrit,  198 

Ceremonial  languages,  228,  251 

Cervus,  origin  of,  205 

Charles  Edward,  Prince,  213 

Charlemagne,  318 

Chayyug,  261 

Chinese,  47,  68,  74,  85,  133,  141, 

144,  163,  169,  170,  247,  251,  292, 

293,  342,  370 
Chinook  of  Oregon,  180 
Christus  in  German,  197 
Christianity  compared  with  Buddh- 
ism, 343  sq. 
Church,  influence  of,  on  language, 

73,  129 
Cicero,  12,  17,  98 
Civilisation,  unifies,  128 
coincident  with  isolating  and 

agglutinative  languages,  141 

blunts  keenness  of  senses,  161 

kills  the  natural,  181 

Clarke,  Dr  Hyde,  85 


Classical  scholarship,  11 

Clicks,  borrowed  by  Kafirs,  198,244 

Climate,  effect  of,  on  pronuncia- 
tion, 199 

Colchis,  dialects  in,  122 

Collectives,  276,  280 

Commerce,  unifying  influence  of, 
129 

Comparatives  in  Latin,  366 

Compounds,  what  they  evidence, 
152,  153 

mark  of  modernness,  216 

Comparative  Philology,  still  in  its 
infancy,  4 

its  results,  xvi.,  xvii. 

hypotheses  of,  must  be  tested, 

5,7, 

combination  of  linguistic  me- 
taphysics and  phonology,  9 

not  an  exact  science,  12 

its  laws  of  two  kinds,  empiri- 
cal and  ultimate,  15 

how  defined,  xvi.  37,  43 

its  practical  aim,  xvii. 

an  historical  science,  37,  53, 

161 

Comparative  Philology,  how  indi- 
vidual uncertainty  eliminated,  40 

its  facts,  13,  41,  44,  105, 

where  begins,  41,  42,  43,  52, 

126,  133,  168,  173,  219,  236,  239 

its  sister  sciences,  46,  50,  51, 

tested  by  history,  49 

practical  rules  of,  53  sq. 

its  name,  58 

not  a  branch  of  classical  philo- 
logy, 58 

injured  by  specialism,  59 

enables  us  to  reconstruct  the 

past,  61. 

how  it  should  treat  of  langu- 
age, 236.     See  Glottology. 

Confucius,  306 

Contree,  derivation  of,  1S5 

Copia,  derivation  of,  11 

Coptic,  structural  change  in,  161, 
368 

influence  of,  196 

Cornu,  not  Semitic,  206 

Corssen,  Prof.,  68,  116 

Could,  derivation  of,  382 

Curtius,  DrE.,  311 


408 


INDEX. 


Curtius,  Prof.  G.,  10,  56,  149,  151, 
156,  240,  241,  255,  351,  356,  361, 
366,  367 

d,  final,  dropped,  48 

changed  to  t,  48 

Dammaras  unable  to  count  beyond 
three,  25 

Danish,  postfixes  article,  186 

Daphne,  meaning  of,  377 

Darwin,  Mr  C,  52 

Darwinism,  102 

Daughter,  derivation  of,  222 

Deaf-mutes,  language  of,  52,  372 

Deecke,  69 

Delitzsch,  Dr  Fr  ,  76 

Delphi,  legend  of,  380 

Dcus,  origin  of,  374 

drj/ios,  derivation  of,  61 

Dha,  148,  241 

Dhd,  45 

Dialectic  regeneration,  26 

Dialects,  changes  in,  111 

relics  of  older,  119 

originally  innumerable,  122, 

401 

natural,  124 

origin  of  a  language,  128 

Dicktasis  in  Homer,  ."561 

Dietrich  of  Bern,  316 

Aiep6s,  derivation  of,  10 

Differentiation  in  language,  216, 
245,  370 

Dine,  derivation  of,  24 

Dionysius  Thrax,  261 

Dogmatology,  or  science  of  reli- 
gions, 341 

Donaldson's  Varronianus,  17,  G8  _ 

Dreams,  suggest  idea  of  the  spiri- 
tual, 327,1*29 

Dual,  precedes  the  plural,  273  sq. 

Earle,  Rev.  J.,  30,  251,  358,  379, 

382 
■i  d.  perfects  in,  19,  36 1  _ 
Edkins,  Kev.  J.,  xviii.,  74,  163 
Ego,  origin  uf,  217.  286,  400 
Egyptian,  old,  79,  88,  1%,  217,  266, 

271,  294,  324 
borrowed  words  from  Semitic, 

210 
Either,  358 


Ekhad,  10S 

Elamite  dialect.  71,  143 

Ellis,  Mr  A.  J.,' 65,  350 

'H/ieis,  how  analysed,  282 

Emphasis,  principle  of,  16,  24 

origin  of,  36 

English  analytic,  132 

supei-iority  of,  180 

participle  in,  185 

accent  and  pronunciation,  353, 

357  sq. 

old  French  words  in,  353 

grammar,  362 

Enough,  350 

"Eiirneravos.  derivation  of,  3S1 

Epithets,  222,  227 

Epithet-stage,  226,  231,  333 

Eponymous  heroes,  326,  379 

EtttcL,  origin  of,  33 

Erekhtheum,  referred  to  in  Odys- 
sev,  382 

Eski'maux,  84,  85,  94,  167,  243, 
338,  380 

why  stationary,  S6 

why  unaffected  by  Scandina- 
vian colonies,  177 

Esthonian  numerals,  207 

mythology,  339 

"Ert,  derivation  of,  135 

Etruscan,  24,  (\S,  112,  186 

sui  generis,  114 

whence  derived,  113 

ttude,  347 

Etymology,  xvi.,  45 

of  many  words  cannot  be  dis- 
covered, 256 

Etymologies,    popular,    348,    376, 

378,  382 

Etzel,  817 
Eumenides,  3S0 
Ewald,  Dr  H.,  90,  252 
Eys,  Mr  Van,  147,  252 

Fables,  how  distinguished  from 
myth,  323 

origin  of,  324 

Pacts  of  philology,  13,  41,  105 

Families  of  speech,  misleading,  100 

Fan,  meaning  of.  247 

Fashion,  effect  of,  on  pronuncia- 
tion, 200 

Father,  derivation  of,  222,  224 


■ 


INDEX. 


409 


Feci,  how  formed,  30 

Feet,  362 

Feridun,  11,  307 

Fetichism,  265,  329  sq. 

Fick,  115,  203,  234,  390 

Firdusi,  11, 187,  191,  307 

Fiske,  Mr,  303,  314 

Flection,  combination  of  meaning 
and  form,  157 

less  advanced  than  agglutina- 
tion, 137 

created  by  meaning,  157,  159 

determined  by  the  relations 

of  the  sentence,  160 

out  of  unmeaning  suffixes  or 

forms,  165 

primitive,  160 

later  may  differ  from  earlier, 

161 

implies  a  pre-existing  inflec- 
tional tendency,  161,  234 

a    principle    working    upon 

material,  166 

not  originated  by  the  material 

(by  phonetic  decay),  167 

Fo,  meaning  of,  247 

Food,  effect  of,  on  pronunciation, 
199 

Forces,  conservation  of,  96 

Four,  derivation  of,  249 

sacredness  of,  314 

Qo^os,  derivation  of,  351 

French  drops  final  letters,  18,  145, 
357 

$v\<xkos,  349 

Further,  derivation  of,  382 

Gallas,  curious  custom  of,  26 

Gascon  dialects,  87 

Te,  230 

Geldart,  Rev.  G.  C,  91 

Gender,  origin  of,  264  sq. 

of  Latin  comparatives,  366 

Genitive  case,  origin  of,  151 ,  288  sq. 

objective  and  subjective,  288 

case,  in  English  and  Persian, 

369 
Georgian,  non- Aryan,  118,  194 
Gesture,  use  of,  26,  52,  53,  169 
Glcesum,  whence  derived,  183 
Glottology,  synonyme  of  Compara- 
tive Philology,  60 


Gold,  derivation  of,  205 

Grammar,  basis  of  comparison  of 
languages,  53,  105,  110,  184,  189 

changes  in,  82 

cannot  be  mixed,  184,  188 

apparent   exceptions  to  this, 

187,  189,  193  sq. 

adapted  to  new  uses  by  foreign 

influence,  197 

yet  only  in  the  noun,  197 

formal,  how  first  composed, 

261 

how  regarded  in  the  last  cen- 
tury, 262 

how  created  by  analogy,  347, 

364  „ 
Gratia,  156 

Greece,  dialects  in,  125 

contrasted  with  Rome,  300 

Green,  derivation  of,  206 

Greenland,  Norse  settlements  in, 

177 
pronunciation  of  women  in, 

247 
Grill,  Dr  J.,  76 
Grimm,  204,  255,  266 
Grimm's  law,  321 

how  explained,  245,  359 

Guna  in  Sanskrit,  31 

defined,  356 

Gundicar,  317 
Gypsies,  the,  324 

Haeckel,  Prof.,  53 

Hahn,  Dr  Von,  316,  332 

Hammock,  whence  derived,  183 

Harar,  language  of,  186,  197 

Harits  (Basque),  23 

Hart,  origin  of,  205 

Hartel,  Prof.,  356,  361 

Haussa,  first  personal  pronoun  in, 

269 
Hawaian  dialect,  18 
Hecdl  (Semitic),  origin  of,  207^ 
Hegelian  philosophy,  xvii. ,  137 
Helen,  311 
Helvetius,  120 
Hemp,  derivation  of,  204 
Herakles,  320,  340 
Herculus,  320 
Hidatsa  idioms,  122 
Hindi,  borrowed  words  in,  182 


410 


INDEX. 


Hindi,  mixed  grammar  in,  193 
History,  test  of  philological  laws, 

49 
not  to  be  sought  in  myths, 

315,  320 
Homer,  10,  156,  311,  319,  322,  350, 

360 
Homeric  dialect,  360  sg. 

false  etymologies  in,  381 

Humboldt,  123,  183 
Huron  dialects,  122 
Hyperion,  312 

Hypotheses,  what  they  are,  6 
their  use  and  abuse,  62 

i,  changed  to  g  in  Anglo-Saxon,  199 

/<://,  contracted  to  i\  17 

Idioms,  may  be  borrowed,  185, 186 

Idola,  xix.,  ('>'■),  376 

Iliad,  311,  319,  360,  381 

Imitative  changes,  37 

Impertinent,  57 

Incorporating   languages,  94,  135, 

140 
Individual,   last  growth   of  time, 

214,  230,  234 

objects  first  named,  221,  225 

from  their  qualities,  224 

Inflectional  languages,  132,  138 
Inorganic  changes,  37 
Instrumental  case,  origin  of,  150, 

157 
Interjections,  not  words,  134 
Interjections!  speech,  121 
Ionian,  derivation  of,  58 
'/?•  (Semitic),  origin  of,  207 

.  188 
Isolating  languages,  110,  132,  137 

do  ooi  speak  in  roots,  169, 170 

Italian,  modern,  35,  349 
Greek,  199 

Japanese,  154,  179,  207,  251,  253, 

295 
Jolly,  Dr,  370 
Jornandes,  .*<17 

/,•  in  primitive  Aryan,  235 

Kadmtu,  .">1 1 

Kafir,  d  prefix  language,  197 

borrowed  clicks,  198 

has  thirteen  genders,  267 


Kafir,  Eenard  the  Fox  in,  324 

Kalewala,  330,  383 

KaAfw,  10 

Kephalos  and  P?'okris,  340 

Khali  f,  derivation  of,  212 

King-dom,  derivation  of,  139 

Knowledge,  derivation  of,  lo9 

K6\\i//3os,  derivation  of,  211 

Koafjios,  98 

Xpataju.e'iv,  3 SI 

Krisa,  in  modern  Greek,  379 

Kronos,  320 

Xpvaos,  not  Semitic,  206 

Kyklops,  321,  377 

Kyrus,  307 

X  changed  to  h,  199 

Laik,  341 

Language,   expression   of   thought 
and  feeling,  xxi.,  8,  375 

creation  of  man,  38 

social,  not   individual,   xvi., 

xxi.,  40,  126 

one  primeval,  67,  219 

— —  woman's,  83 

rapid  change  in,  83.  86,  111 

but  not  in  fundamental  cha- 


racter, 173 

sacred,  84 

result  of  numberless  essays, 

120,  127 

akin  to  interjectional  speech, 

121 
based  upon  the  sentence,  136, 

152,  215 

radical  character  of,  un- 
changed, 143 

of  roots,  impossible,  x\\,  168 

an  organism  only  metaphori- 
cally. 172 

reflection  of  societv,  61,  171, 

176,  239,  299 

not  an  index  of  race,  175  sq. 

how  borrowed,  17»">  >'</. 

begins  in  beehive  community, 

215 

grows  by  differentiation,  216, 

243,  370 

ceremonial.  228 

origin  of,  not  to  be  sought  in 

roots,  235 


INDEX. 


411 


Language,  "where  it  begins,  xviii.  ,236 

metaphysics  of,  259,  298 

tendency  of,  to  simplify  and 

make  uniform,  349 
Languages,  lost,  119 

classified  by  the  sentence,  137 

Laws  of  language,  15,  46 

many    best    obtained    from 

modern   European   tongues,  50, 

72 
Laziness,  principle  of,  16,  346 
Lenormant,  M.  Fr.,  71,  118,  392 
Letters,  superfluous,  in  English,  29 
Lithuanian,  47 

Locative  case,  origin  of,  150,  155 
Logic,  to  be  interpreted  by  Glotto- 

logy,  xvii. 
Looks,  52 
Ludwig,  Prof.,  of  Prague,  151, 157, 

158 
Lyell,  Sir  C,  82 
Lykian    inscriptions,     non-Aryan, 

115 

Magyar,  88,  147,  297 

Mahaffy,  Prof.,  324 

Maize,  whence  derived,  183 

Maleventum,  380 

Man,  antiquity  of,  103 

originally  communistic,  120 

existed  physically  before  lan- 
guage, 126 

Maneh,  origin  of,  208 

Manes,  derivation  of,  224 

Mangle,  whence  derived,  183 

Mangold,  Prof..  61,  361 

March,  Prof.,  199 

Marriage,  origin  of,  214 

Mas  Muller,  Prof.,  x.,  xxii.,  16.  24, 
26,  48,  84,  86, 107, 156,  185,  193, 
194,  247,  257,  291,  339,  344,  376, 
400 

Maya,  language  of,  187 

Me,  older  than  /,  286,  313 

Melikertes,  Semitic,  321 

Meme,  derivation  of,  21 

Menes,  321 

Mipoires,  derivation  of,  10 

Metaphors,  374 

Metaphysics,  meaning  of,  258 

of  language  defined,  298 

Meyer,  G.,  399 


Mexican,  polysynthetic,  146 
Milton,  353 
Mina,  origin  of,  208 
Minden.  battle  of,  315 
Minos,  321 
Moabite  stone,  90 
Mohammed,  306,  318,  343 
Moon,  derivation  of,  210 

why  few  myths  about  it,  332 

Mother,  derivation  of,  224 
Mundus,  98 

Music,  si  owl  v  developed,  246 
Mythology,  302 

explained  by  the  history  of 

words,  303,  305 

primitive  philosophising,  303 

its  sustaining   element,   304, 

334,  337 

precedes  a  religion,  307 

must  be  based  on  etymology, 

310,  321,  340,  375 
belongs  to  the  natural,  childish 

era  of  mankind,  313,  376 

native  and  borrowed,  distin- 
guished, 320 

explanation  of,  specially  aided 

by  ethnology,  327 
preceded  by  ancestor-worship, 

327  sq. 
and  fetichism,  329  sq. 

originates  in  desire  for  food, 

329  sq.,  336 

and  confusion  between  object 

and  subject,  330 
chiefly  product  of  the  epithe- 

tic  stage,  333 

has  no  past  or  future,  333 

definition  of,  334 

objections  to  scientific  ex- 
planation of,  334  sq. 

of  non-Aryan  peoples,  33S.  339 

Myths,  similarity  of,  no  proof  of 
common  origin,  313,  340 

have  a  setting  in  geography 

and  history,  315 

history  not  to  be  sought  in, 

315,  320 

fastened  on  historical  charac- 
ters, 318 

distinguished   from   allegory 

and  fable,  323 

also  from  historic  fiction,  326 


41! 


INDEX. 


Myths,  which  go  back  to  fetichism, 
330 

why  confined  to  atmospheric 

phenomena,  332 

how  multiplied,  333 

preserved  by  the  religious  in- 
stinct, 334 

cannot  all  be  explained,  335 

often  based  on  popular  ety- 
mologies, 376 

created  by  analogy,  375,  377 

may  grow  out  of  homonymes 

and  synonymes,  376 

NAMA  Hottentot,  266 
Names,  what  they  are,  301 
Nationalities,  rights  of,  180 
Negative,  different  ways  of  express- 
ing, 25 

distinguished  by  tone,  295 

Negro,  black  skin  of,  103 

education  of,  stops  at  four- 
teen, 172 

attempt  of,  to  learn  English, 

184 

Neuters,  287 

New  Caledonians,  89,  298 

Niebelungen  Lied,  316 

Nine^  derivation  of,  249 

Nirvana,  310 

Nominative  case,  origin  of,  151, 152 

of  late  date,  2?0 

Norman  invasion,  effects  of,  on 
English,  50,  185,  198,  350 

Noun,  borrowed  declension  of,  pos- 
sible, 197 

Number,  meaning  of,  259,  273  sq., 
280 

Numeral  suffixes,  270,  280 

Numerals,  54,  108,  249,  253,  274, 
280 

Nursery  names,  18 

Od  force,  38 

Odyssey,  313,  319,  321,  3S1 

age  of,  360 

affectation   of    archaism   in, 

381,  382 

Otoa,  why  has  long  vowel  in  singu- 
lar. 32 

Oldfield,  Mr,  274 

Onomatopoeia,  222,  237 


Orang,  different  forms  of,  84 
Orang-otanrt,  325 
Organic  changes,  37 
Ostiak  conjugation,  293 
Oyster,  203 

Papuan  languages,  176,  279 
Paris,  311 
Parisian  dialect,  49 
Pehlevi  inscriptions,  189 

language  of,  never  spoken,  191 

Pclasyoi,  derivation  of,  58 

Pempedula,  183 

Hei-re,  origin  of,  33 

Perfect,  formed  by  reduplication, 

278 
Perruque,  derivation  of,  16 
Persian,   Semitic   construction  in, 

186,  192 

Arabic  plural  in,  187 

Altaic  postposition  in,  192 

Person,   third,   in  Aryan  verb,  of 

unknown  origin,  294 
Persons  of  verb,  origin  of,  293  sq. 
Petorritum,  derivation  of,  183 
Phwakians,  the,  382 
Philippi,  Dr  F.  >V.,  370 
Phonetic  decay,  xx.,  17,  215,  345 

sq.  348 

origin  of,  36 

cannot   produce    mental   and 

formative  change,  167,  263  sq. 
Phonologv,  its  province,  xvi.,  44, 

62,  171,"  263,  346 

connected  with  grammar,  19S 

foreign  influence  on,  198 

changes  in,  199  sq. 

Physiology,  its  relation  to  Glotto- 

logv,  xvi.,  51 
Pigeon-English,  19,  133,  179,  189, 

221,  369 
Pita  his.  Mount,  319 
Plato,  Kratylus  of,  10,  259,  -90 

on  the  end  of  science,  '.'f, 

IMautus,  16 

HVes  in  Homer,  381 

Plural,  origin  <>f,  273  sq. 

not   distinguished   from   the 

singular.  275 
first  formed  by  reduplication, 

277 
Plurals,  broken,  in  Semitic,  2. 6 


INDEX. 


413 


Poetry,  origin  of,  33 

of  early  speech,  336 

defined,  376,  383 

influence  of  analogy  on,  383 

forms  of,  383 

Politics,  modern,  130 

Polysynthetic  languages,  145 

contrasted  with,  incorporating, 

148 

Polynesian,  47,  55,  67,  80,  84,  228, 
247,  296 

Portuguese,  47,  178 

Pott,  Prof.,  57,  169,  172,  177,  240, 
251,  257,  352,  365 

Prefix,  pronominal  languages,  266, 
290 

Prepositions,  not  to  be  detected  in 
roots,  241 

Present  tense,  how  formed  in  Ti- 
betan, 33,  95,  293 

Prometheus,  meaning  of,  333,  377 

Pronominal  roots,  150,  249  sq. 

did  not  originate  flection,  154 

do  not  denote  grammatical  re- 
lations in  the  agglutinative  lan- 
guages, 163 

a  philological  myth,  165 

Pronominal  prefixes,  270 

Pronouns,  54 

distinguished  by  gesture  or 

tone,  295 

originally  substantives,  229, 

251   295 

i'n  Semitic,  230,  252 

relative,  370 

Pronunciation,  changed  by  ana- 
logy, 356  sq. 

Proper  names,  379 

Psychology,  its  relation  to  Glotto- 
logy, xvi.,  51 

Pythagoras,  98 

Qu,  un-Semitic  sound,  104 

in  Kymric,  183 

Quantity,  355 

in  Latin,  355 

in  Greek,  356 

Ra,   postposition  in  Persian    and 

Mongol,  192 
Race,  unchanged  within  the  limits 

of  history,  173 


Race,  each  has  its  own  mission,  173 

language  not  an  index  of,  175 

sq. 
Ramses,  III.,  324 
Reduplication,  278,  365 

implies  a  dual,  277 

denotes  continuousness,  278 

Relative  sentence,  the,  369 
Religion,  definition  of,  305 

organised  and  individual.  305 

must  have  a  founder,  306 

based  on  mythology,  308 

interpreted     by     Glottology, 

xvii.,  308,  3*0 

begins  with  ancestor-worship, 

327 

excited  by  desire   of    food, 

329  sq. 

Religious,  science  of,  or  Dogmato- 
logy,  341 

based  on  Glottology,  342 

general  results  of,  342 

Renard  the  Fox  in  the  Kafirs, 
324 

Rhvme,  384 

Rhys,  Mr  J.,  183,  189,  359 

Rig- Veda,  337 

'Po8oda.Krv\os,  152 

Romansch,  48 

Root  period,  characteristics  of,  vi. 
sq.,  248 

Roots  alone  mny  be  compared,  54 

why  not  discovei'able  in  Poly- 
nesian, 55 

monosyllabic,  74 

polysyllabic,  75 

Semitic,  76 

not  all  verbal,  79 

pronominal,  150,  249  sq. 

unexpressed  types,  152,  159, 

169,  256 

not  monosyllabic  when  signi- 
ficant, 158 

variant,  with  same  meaning, 

159,  240,  248 

never  formed  a  language,  168, 

170,  226 

extracted    by    grammarians, 

vii.,  169,  231 

so-called,  may  have  been  in- 
flected, 169,  234 
exclude  sentences,  170 


414 


INDEX. 


Roots,  reached  by  comparison,  218 

not  of  language,  but  lan- 
guages, 219 

not  of  general  abstract  mean- 
ing, 220 
cease  to  be  invented,  228 

many,    meaning    the     same 

thing,  232,  233 

same,  the,  meaning  different 

things,  352 

do  not  reveal  the  origin  of  lan- 
guage, 235 

their  nature,  239 

modern,  256 

decomposed,  240 

not  simple,  243 

sensuous,  249 

peculiar  to  different  members 

of  same  family,  loo 
in  Finnic,  352 

•s,  English  plural  in,  185,  350 

Sacred  languages,  S4 

Saltford,  origin  of,  379 

Samson,  309 

Sandwich  Islanders,  49,  216,  246 

Sanguis,  102 

Saturnus,  320 

Savages,  disunited,  122,  127 

• cannot  count,  274 

have  no  religion,  305 

Savelsberg,  115 

Scherer,  Prof.,  151 

Schleicher,  Prof.,xvi.,  105, 100,255 

Schott,  Prof.,  70,  207,  370 

Science,  what  it  is,  7 

its  aim,  96 

its  laws,  97 

Scotch,  southern,  pronunciation, 
202 

Sella,  106 

Semitic  languages,  70,  155 

influence  of,  on  Greek  gram- 
mar, xviii. 

attempts  to  connect  them  with 

Aryan.  76,  104,  108 

no  biliteral  roots  in,  78,  239 

nominal  roots,  80 

origin  of  the  perfect  in,  90 

phonology  of,  104 

cradle  of,  105 

use  of  vowels  in,  149,  254,  363 


Semitic,  cases  of,  how  formed,  155 

—  allied  roots  in,  248 

—  gender  in,  267 

—  dual  and  plural  in,  285 

—  case-endings  in,  286 

—  genitive  in,  289,  292 

—  relative  in,  370 
poetry  of,  3S3 

'  Semitic  civilisation,  whence  de- 
rived, 207 

Sentence,  starting-point  of  lan- 
guage, viii.,  xx.,  xxi.,  136,  152, 
159 

basis  of  linguistic  classifica- 
tion, 136 

Sepals,  38 

Septem,  derivation  of,  109 

Serpent- worship,  328 

Sestcrtium,  origin  of,  2n4 

Seven,  derivation  of,  249 

Sex,  102,  109 

Shotover  Hill,  origin  of,  318 

Siegbert,  317 

Sigurd  or  Siegfrid,  317 

Signification,  changes  of,  06,  373 

how  classed  by  Pott,  56 

creates  flection,  157,  159 

using  pre-existing  unmeaning 

suffixes  for  the  purpose,  165 

influenced   by   analogy,   351, 

373 

Simplicity,  result  of  culture,  243 

Sit,  Aoti 

Slang,  84,  121,  233 

Slavonic,  when  extinct  in  Prussia, 

176 
Societv  prior  to  the  individual,  214 
Solea,  106 

Soul,  derivation  of,  249,  374 
Sounds,  originally  few  and  vague, 

245,  -2V> 
Spencer,  Mr  Herbert,  7,  167,  214, 

291,  326 
Spirit,  .".74 

Spix  and  Martins.  123,  296 
Stanbridge,  Mr,  274 
"^repoTTr/,  10 
Steinthal,  Prof.,  xviii. 
-sti,  second  person  siugular  ending 

in  Latin.  157 
Sub-Semitic  dialects,  186,  196,  370 
Siindjluth,  380 


INDEX. 


415 


Superlative,   akin    to  the    plural, 

277 
Susiana,  70,  71 
Swa,  150 
Swanhild,  317 

Sweet,  Mr  H.,  37,  48,  152,  246 
Synonymes  in  English,  27 
Syntax,  comparative,  xviii.,  370 

■ varies  with  accent,  31 

influenced  by  analogy,  370 

Synthetic,  prior  to  analytic,  167 

Ta  (Egyptian),  106 

pronominal,  a  nonentity,  151 

Tamil,  plural  affix  in,  193 
Tapu,  custom  of,  84,  85,  380 
Tar,  suffix,  139,  224,  249 

in  Sanskrit,  158 

Tasmanian,  80,  181,  222,  233 

Tanbheit,  origin  of,  164 

Taylor,  Rev.  I.,  114 

TAcros,  381 

Telugu,  borrowed  words  in,  182, 

193 
Tennyson,  353 
Tense,  the  oldest,  88  sq. 
Tenses,  the  Semitic,  90 

the  Turkish,  90 

Terence,  17 

Termini,  187,  197 
Thebes,  311,  319 

Theodoric.  317 

Three,  derivation  of,  249,  274 

Tibetan,  present  tense  in,  33,  95, 
293 

how  gender  marked  in,  268 

genitive  in,  290 

Tobacco,  whence  derived,  183 

Tomahairk,  whence  derived,  183 

Totemism,  325  sq. 

Trirjal  forms,  279 

Ttitd,  307 

Tpiroyeveia,  derivation  of,  10 

T/utc6,  10 

Troy,  311,  319 

Trumbull,  Mr  J.  H.,  95,  123,  135 

Tshetsh,  270 

Turanian,  meaning  of  the  term,  21, 
70,  1C0 

languages,   approach   pheno- 
mena of  inflection,  xx.,  137 

compounds  in,  242 


Turanian,  gender  in,  267 
Tylor,  Mr,  253,  274,  339,  372 

Ugro-Altaic  or  Ural-Altaic  family, 

21 
Ukuhlonipa,  custom  of,  84 
'T/xe?s,  how  analysed,  282 
Unus,  derivation  of,  109 

Vai-Negroes,  163,  324 
Tannic  inscriptions,  118,  389 
Vectu  (Latin),  159 
Verb,  origin  of,  88 

meaning  of,  134,  157 

neuter,  135 

passive,  135 

Aryan,  not  originally  inflected, 

148,  157,  295 

of  late  growth,  156 

Greek,  in  aw,  ew,  ou,  165,  362 

origin  of  persons  of,  293  sq. 

primarily  like   the   genitive, 

296 

position  of,  in  the  sentence, 

371  sq. 

-vi,  perfect  in,  160,  365 

Vitrum,  derivation  of,  355 

Voile,  347,  348 

Voltaire,  8 

Vowels,  made  significant,  253 

in  Semitic,  363 

in  English,  358 

Vridh,  242 

Wagner,  Dr,  11 

Waitz,  Dr,  136 

Wallachian,  49,  186 

Webster,  Rev.  W.,  87 

Wedlock,  derivation  of,  139 

Weights,    Greeks,     derived    from 

Babylonia.  209 
Welsh  and  Turanian,  190 
Wendish,  last  speaker  of,  in  Riigen, 

177 
Westphal  on  the  verb,  148 
Whateley,  Archbishop,  340 
Whitney,  Prof.,  43,  56,  142,  166, 

168,  354,  373,  400 
Whole,  derivation  of,  10,  382 
Wiq,  origin  of,  16 
Wilson,  Rev.  J.  L.,,  295 
Windisch,  Prof.,  370 


416 


INDEX. 


Wo  !  derivation  of,  17 

Wolof  article,  271 

"Words,  facts  of  Glottology,  13,  41 

what  they  are,  134,  136,  152, 

301 

compound,  152,  216 

cannot  exist  apart  from  the 

sentence,  159 

borrowed,  182,  202  sq. 

grow  out  of  the  sentence,  217, 

234,  243 

react  on  thought,  299 

how  they  change.  300 


"Words  may  mislead,  301 
World,  derivation  of,  99 

Ya,  58,  148  _ 
Yorkshire  dialect,  48 
Yu  (Chinese),  106 
Yule,  derivation  of,  301 

Za'a,  203 

Zend  influenced  by  Semitic,  189 

Zoroastrianism.  342 

Zulu  dialect,  221,  269,  290 

ancestor -worship,  328 


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